


Sussex

by SilentAuror



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Time, M/M, POV John Watson, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 19:21:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/917065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentAuror/pseuds/SilentAuror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John can't seem to stop touching Sherlock. He can push the anger away, but sometimes he just needs to take Sherlock's pulse again. Slight angst, case-fic, post-Reichenbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sussex

**Author's Note:**

> Part I of Helen's Russian translation is now available here: https://ficbook.net/readfic/3334588

**Sussex**

 

He knows he shouldn’t, but he does it anyway, can’t help it, really. It’s not like Sherlock ever says anything. He gets away with it. After all, he figures, it should go both ways. How many times has Sherlock literally treated him like furniture, leaning on him, resting a coffee cup on his shoulder or even head, legs draped over his lap as though he wasn’t even there? Why shouldn’t he be allowed to touch back a little? Of course John never says this, exactly. Not to himself and certainly not out loud, but he knows he does it, finds reasons to touch Sherlock, some of which are, well, just a little more legitimate than others. 

At the crime scene two days ago, for instance, there really had been wood chips stuck in Sherlock’s hair. (Of course there were; if he was going to go crawling through a bin of cedar chips like that, it was bound to happen.) John had waited until Lestrade and company were all focused on something else before going to Sherlock and brushing the bits of fragrant wood out of his hair and off his suit jacket. Sherlock had allowed it, albeit impatiently – he didn’t want to look ridiculous, yet also didn’t like having it pointed out to him that he was covered in rubbish, even silently, even by John, so of course it was a bit of an internal battle for him. He’d let John do it, though, sighing but bending a little to give John better access to his hair. 

He can admit to himself that he loves touching Sherlock’s hair. It’s soft, even when he’s got product in it to keep the curls in order. When it’s a little longer and the locks begin to straighten a little, drooping into his eyes and fluffing out over his ears, John will tousle it teasingly and tell him to get it cut. Sherlock tolerates this with moderately good humour and ignores it, though he will often go and have it cut sometime in the next week or two, never saying anything about it. John has learned not to praise too much when Sherlock does as he’s told in these instances. It’s a fine line, complimenting Sherlock Holmes. When it’s related to his mind, the sky is the limit. Sherlock _loves_ being praised for his brilliant deductions, consciously angles to make John say things, will stand there absorbing it in apparent, if silent pleasure, never telling him _stop, now you’re just exaggerating, it wasn’t that clever, it was just obvious, of course_. Of course not; he loves being told how clever he is. Other things, though; compliments pertaining to his appearance or behaviour, those John has learned to treat more carefully. _Nice haircut_ , he’ll say casually. Sherlock will turn a page of the newspaper and make one of those non-committal sounds he excels at, then change the subject. 

John suspects he is still glad to have been told, but is either more self-conscious about these compliments or else finds it somehow off-putting, as though it isn’t John’s business, perhaps. Or perhaps it comes too close to the invisible line in the sand between work partners and… being-married-to-his-work. That thing. He does listen, though. He pays attention. Once John had mentioned that he liked a particular shirt that Sherlock owned, a purple one – aubergine, Sherlock had corrected him. It was all he had said, but when they went to Harry’s birthday dinner the following week, Sherlock emerged from his bedroom wearing it, his eyes cutting to John, as though waiting for him to say that he’d noticed Sherlock was wearing it. Or so John had thought, at least. When he’d acknowledged it, Sherlock hadn’t said anything at all, just gone and swept his coat on, turning up the collar and examining himself in the mirror above the mantle. 

John is almost proud of Sherlock’s looks. He wonders sometimes if this is odd, but those times when Sherlock uses his overwhelmingly good looks to win over a reluctant admission or permission, he feels unfailingly proud of it. He feels secure enough in his own looks that he doesn’t feel outfaced by Sherlock’s. Oh, certainly, his own, solid, regular-but-handsome looks lack the flash and almost otherworldly appeal of Sherlock’s old-fashioned, exaggerated grace, but he doesn’t mind. That look would look ridiculous on him, and anything else wouldn’t do Sherlock justice. He likes those moments when they dress up for something, both straightening ties and collars in the mirror above the mantle, both of them looking at Sherlock. Well – Sherlock _does_ look at him sometimes, too. He never says anything, but sometimes he’ll give a barely perceptible nod. John secretly loves those and is careful to keep that fact to himself. Surely if Sherlock thought he didn’t look right, he would say so. He personally thinks they are perfect together, in just about every way: Sherlock is strange, ethereal, socially inept (unless he’s focused on social skills to get answers for a case, in which case his perception can be terrifyingly accurate, as John himself has had all too much cause to learn). He is all long limbs and brain work. Not that he can’t handle a gun; he certainly can, but his instinct is to fire from the head, not the hand. John is normal, everyday, yet obviously not dull or boring if Sherlock has tolerated him for this long, and John has come to appreciate by now what a compliment this is, indeed. He knows how to blend in, has learned a tremendous amount about observation and deduction, and reacts and moves like a soldier, sometimes vastly more astute when it comes to danger than Sherlock is, especially if his attention is on the puzzle rather than his immediate surroundings. It works: John will watch for potential gunmen while Sherlock thinks about pollen. They are a perfect match. 

When he thinks about it, the constant need to touch Sherlock seems fairly obvious to him. He doesn’t remember it having happened before Sherlock died (“died”, he always has to remind himself), so it is clearly a small remnant of anxiety related to that: needing physical confirmation of Sherlock’s presence and vitality. Perhaps not that small, but John prefers not to think about that too much. He caught himself taking Sherlock’s pulse at least once per day for the first three or four weeks after his return. After he’d stopped trying to kill him, that was. (Sherlock would say this is an exaggeration; John hadn’t tried to _kill_ him exactly, but… John doesn’t like remembering that, either. It was an ugly time. The point is that Sherlock is back now.) He thinks this is reasonable: anyone who had lost someone so close like that, getting them back so suddenly, would be bound to need reassurances, wouldn’t they? He feels like it must be a normal response. Not that he has asked. He stopped seeing Ella again. Sherlock’s return was the only therapy he’d ever needed. _One last miracle, for me_ , he’d pleaded, and he’d got it. He is perfectly content now. 

Or at least, as content as it is possible to be when one lives with a sociopathic maniac with an addictive personality and an extremely short attention span. John never did understand exactly how he had managed to hang on for so long, how Sherlock hadn’t got bored of him and moved on, but he not only hadn’t, he’d come back. As angry as John had been that he’d left in the first place, once he’d got over the initial anger over Sherlock not having told him he wasn’t dead (the very thought of which will still get John’s face hot with wrath if he lets himself think about it too much), the bottom line is still that Sherlock came back. This is what he reminds himself, sometimes with more gritting of his teeth than there should be, but he does agree with the statement. The _point_ is that he got Sherlock back. 

Some days, it is harder to remember that this is, no matter what else happened. Sherlock is there in the sitting room, drooping like a wilting plant on the sofa in his blue dressing gown, or sitting at the desk, fingers nearly blurring as he types an email at 140 words-per-minute, or doing unholy things with a blow torch to skin samples in the kitchen. John placidly tolerates this, reminding himself that he is far happier now having to check for bits of organ meat on the counter before he makes a sandwich than he was during that terrible blank stretch where the kitchen was spotless and no one played the violin at three in the morning. He _is_ happy. That part, he doesn’t need reminders for. He passes Sherlock bent over the microscope, turns on the kettle, and touches Sherlock’s shoulder. 

“What are you working on?”

Sherlock’s shoulder is warm through the dressing gown; he showered about half an hour ago and his skin still holds the heat of the water. “I’m studying the way DNA strands break down after death.”

Some things have gone back to being exactly the same as they were before, but others have shifted subtly. One is that Sherlock now occasionally permits John to distract him while he works. Before, he would have made one of those vague noises or told John he was working and to leave him alone. He makes occasional concessions now, and John likes them. He doesn’t feel as excluded now.

“Are those finger nails?” he asks. 

“Got them from the lab at Bart’s,” Sherlock acquiesces. He doesn’t raise his head but turns his face a little, eyes flicking up to John’s. “Want to take a look?”

This is surprising. John has never asked before and Sherlock has never offered. New territory. “All right,” he says, and Sherlock gets up to give him the seat. “What am I looking for, exactly?”

Sherlock explains, changing the slides to show him samples taken from a still-living body compared with samples from the recently deceased and samples from the long deceased. He launches into explanation mode at three thousand words per second and gathering speed, and John believes he is following, more or less. He did study all of this once, after all, though certainly less from the pathological angle – his interest as always been in the preservation of the living, rather than the examination of the dead and decaying. He sorts out the differences as Sherlock switches out the slides and explains his findings. He makes the right sounds. And honestly, while he will never find this a relaxing hobby, it _is_ nice to know what Sherlock is thinking about. And it is genuinely interesting; Sherlock is brilliant. Empty days really are wasted on a mind like his. John has wondered, sometimes, how it was that Mycroft managed to turn an almost identical brilliance into a massively successful career and quite convincing social normality, while Sherlock is… Sherlock. Regardless, there has never been any question about which of them he prefers, social propriety aside. Mycroft might manage to host a Christmas party and only imply his insulting deductions about all of the guests while Sherlock lacks the impulse to filter at all. Still, though – his letting John see one of his precious experiments on decaying body parts is surely an indication that he has learned _something_ about accommodating people. 

Or just one person. John still clings to the firm faith that he is special, somehow. He doesn’t understand why, but he has been given to understand that his continued presence in Sherlock’s life is in every way exceptional. He no longer even objects when people assume they are a couple. He is used to it by now, he tells himself, and honestly, he isn’t ashamed of it any more. If it is complimentary on a private level that Sherlock not only permits John in his life but seems to actively want him there, it is an even greater compliment to have him be willing to call John a colleague, as though John or anyone else could keep up with him intellectually – and to have people see him as the one person the great Sherlock Holmes would call a friend, or something more – John finally began to see this as a vastly more important thing than the slight to his perceived heterosexuality. He wonders if Sherlock has noticed that he has stopped objecting, and if so, what he thinks of it. 

He gets off the chair and surrenders the microscope to Sherlock once more when the kettle boils. “That’s very interesting,” he says, which is a poor response to the flurry of information Sherlock has just dispensed, but it is the most he can manage at the moment. “Tea?”

“Please.” Sherlock slides back into the chair, eyes already refocusing. John thinks he’s lost him into the research again already, but then Sherlock adds with a touch of hope, “Earl Grey?” 

John smiles, though Sherlock can’t see it. “Sure.”

He stopped minding long ago that it is almost always he who makes the tea. That hasn’t changed. 

(He’s not sure he would want it to.)

***

It has been four months now, and life mostly feels normal again. They have, despite all odds, picked up where they left off again. As long as John doesn’t think too much about… that, then they are all right. Everyone has been terribly tactful, at least after the initial shock. Well, everyone except Harry, who has insisted since the first that they were a couple, even if they didn’t have sex, and refused to let it go. Not unlike other people, but your own family is supposed to believe you and take your side. She reacted with almost more anger than John had, on finding out that Sherlock was still alive, after all. She and Sherlock had never got along particularly well, though it was usually all civility on the surface. Sherlock usually managed to subside into slightly-withdrawn blandness around her and Harry limited her remarks to terse retorts to anything Sherlock said that she found objectionable. If there was a girlfriend in the picture, it was often she who eased the way socially. Sherlock never objected to spending time with Harry, with or without a girlfriend, which John had always found bewilderingly accommodating. Perhaps it was a silent apology for Mycroft’s continued presence in John’s life. 

Harry had been full of objections to Sherlock from the start, none of which she felt any compunction not to share with John on the side. (“He’s too attractive for you, he’ll probably cheat on you.” Or, “He’s downright _weird_ , John, can’t you find someone more normal?” Or, “What was all that about the couple at the next table? How the hell did he ‘notice’ all that, and who bloody cares, anyway?”) Still – it saved John from being the sole target of her relentless criticism, and when she was sober, Harry could occasionally be good fun. He had always looked up to her and admitted that he, like any younger sibling, probably still harboured some childish yearning for her approval. But she flatly refused to believe that they weren’t a couple. It was annoying, but he’d grown accustomed to that, too. 

Oddly, it had been Sherlock who had suggested that they have dinner with Harry again, about three weeks after his return. When John had called Harry to arrange it, she’d gone uncharacteristically silent on him, for so long that he’d held the phone away from his face to see if the call had been disconnected. When she finally agreed, it was flat and she’d hung up immediately after establishing a time and location. She was waiting (alone) outside when they arrived, slapped Sherlock soundly across the face, then gone inside as though nothing had happened. She ignored him entirely for the first half hour, then began to slowly thaw. Sherlock asked her about her job, remembering details that John had forgotten, persistently following up about coworkers, former noisy neighbours who had long since moved out by now (they’d moved while Sherlock was Away, as John privately thought of it). Eventually Harry’s tongue loosened and she began to open up, though she pointedly didn’t turn any of the questions back toward Sherlock. At point one she’d even laughed at something he said, to John’s amazement. Sherlock was genuinely trying. He could see that. And even _Harry_ , prickly, chip-on-her-shoulder-for-life Harry, was responding. He hadn’t even thought, until much later, that the entire thing had been much more about him than about Harry. Sherlock had wanted him to notice, notice that he was making an effort. 

John mostly just tries not to think too deeply about any of it. He gets up and goes to the surgery, comes home and makes tea and they eat dinner, either at home or (more frequently), out. Sherlock always pays, as he always did. John stopped offering long ago, anyway. They sit in their chairs and watch the news. John scans the papers and looks for potential cases. Sherlock has finally got back into the good graces of NSY. Greg Lestrade took a beating in the public eye as well as a demotion, but when Moriarty’s remains had been discovered and correctly identified, Sherlock’s named was cleared post-mortem (“post-mortem”, he reminds himself) and Lestrade was reinstated. John has always suspected that Mycroft had something to do with the sorting of the records, and possibly Lestrade’s reinstatement, too. He’d been so angry, then, wondering how things could have gone differently had Mycroft worked a little faster. There’d been so much he just hadn’t understood. The ballistics and powder burns had proved (seemed to prove, and there was another proof of Sherlock’s lasting effect on him) that Moriarty had shot himself, but if he had, why had Sherlock jumped? He had just wanted to _know_ , wanted to be in on it all. Had needed to understand. 

John catches himself on the bus on the way to work, realises he was thinking about it again. He takes a deep breath and consciously unclenches his fists. There is still much anger, so much that he finds it disturbing, and it’s _his_ anger. He listens to himself breathe and turns his thoughts firmly to the day ahead, instead. Something small and routine and non-upsetting. His shift at the surgery is just ten until four, covering for Dr Marks, who is on holiday in Majorca. That’ll do it. While steady work has its benefits, he has found that he prefers these substitutions, three weeks in one surgery, perhaps two months at the next, a week or two off, then a month somewhere else. Once he lasted an entire four months (a partial maternity leave), and then it was back to staring at the walls and trying to write something that wasn’t about Sherlock. Anyway: it is Tuesday and for some reason, Tuesday always means a lot of seniors at this particular surgery. That’s fine; he will tell most of them that their imagined illness is something much smaller to the relief of half of them and the indignation of the other half, and then he will go home and they will go for dinner. Sherlock mentioned a particular hole-in-the-wall Syrian place that they had once discovered on a stake-out and suggested it over breakfast. John smiles to himself now. Before, Sherlock rarely would have suggested plans in advance. Plans are John’s area. This doesn’t mean that the plan will necessarily happen – he knows Sherlock far too well for that – but he appreciates the gesture all the same. This is how it is now, these sudden shifts from anger and resentment to relief and much warmer feelings related to having his best friend back, which turns into guilty touches and an almost neurotic need for confirmation. He had passed Sherlock the honey then, after his dinner suggestion, noticing that their fingers touched on the bottle and that his let go a little too slowly. 

It's natural. (Isn’t it?)

***

Only very late at night, alone in his room with no one to witness his thoughts or his facial expressions, can he possibly admit to himself that what he feels for Sherlock has decidedly left the realm of the platonic. As maddening as it is – after all, how many times has he insisted, publicly and privately, that he is _not_ gay? – he acknowledges to himself in the quietest of inner voices possible that it has been this way for some time. Since long before… since Before. Considerably before. He should have realised by the time Irene Adler came into their lives. (And thank you so much for _that_ , on top of everything else, Jim Moriarty, John thinks, still harbouring traces of bitterness over that whole business. Possibly more than traces.) He doesn’t know how or when it started. He is fully convinced that this enormous compromise of his prized heterosexuality is limited specifically to Sherlock; he has never so much as contemplated any other male, ever. Sherlock is exceptional in his life, too. It makes sense, in a way: John puts up with crap from Sherlock that he never would have dreamed of accepting from anyone else, yet somehow it just makes sense. Even when he gets angry or feels put upon, it isn’t as though he’s ever said no to Sherlock, sometimes to his own astonishment. He knows that it isn’t so much that he’s somehow come over gay. It’s only Sherlock: Sherlock, who has spoiled him for anyone else. He hadn’t realised that at some point his resentment over Sherlock wanting him to be available absolutely all of the time, seemed to actively sabotage his relationships, had somehow become something that he didn’t just tolerate, but even liked, depended on. Until Sherlock was gone and he missed being needed, wanted all of the time, even if it was only so that Sherlock could think more clearly because John was there in the room to ignore at his leisure. John has the wits to realise that this sounds totally unhealthy and co-dependent, and that only a masochistic idiot would miss being ignored, but he did. And Sherlock doesn’t ignore him nearly as much any more. 

That’s something, at any rate. 

***

They get a crime. When Lestrade calls, Sherlock is even happier than he’d been over the Study in Pink case, going from one of his sofa wilts to sitting up after answering the phone and listening to Lestrade for a moment, to hanging up and leaping onto the sofa, over the coffee table, bouncing around the sitting room and shouting out bits of information to John, who is watching all of this with amusement. He gathers from Sherlock’s flying words that there has been a triple homicide possibly linked to a cold case from Sussex from seven years ago (one they should have called Sherlock in for back then for, as Sherlock is saying from his bedroom, hurriedly getting dressed). John gets up and puts on his jacket and shoes, double-checks that he’s got his wallet (cash for a cab, good) and keys, and is ready. When Sherlock barrels out of his bedroom, buttoning his suit jacket, that light of the hunt gleaming in his eyes, John opens the door and pelts down the stairs after him. Sherlock’s heels tap alternately on the floor of the taxi all the way to the crime scene and John fights back a smile. Sherlock is supremely happy, he thinks, and after a moment, realises that he is, too. The whoosh of adrenaline has swept through him from the moment Sherlock sat bolt upright on the sofa and they have a real case again, at last, possibly a big one. 

As his knees bounce, Sherlock’s thumbs are dancing across his phone, searching for God only knows what. Fifteen minutes later, he stops and pockets the phone, turns toward John and positively _beams_. Not just his smiling-for-the-public face, just his best, genuine, excited-happy-and-happy-to-have-someone-to-share-it-with smile. John grins back. 

Sherlock starts talking about the cold case then, explains why Lestrade thinks this triple murder may be related. John files away the information and asks questions that Sherlock approves of, and begins to understand.

Seven years earlier, a string of murders had cropped up in the Sussex, Surrey, and Kent. They had all featured victims murdered in the same way, but the murders had been spaced erratically, with several months between each, once nearly a year, until they suddenly stopped. Four people had been murdered. It had been assigned to one of Lestrade’s superiors, a retired detective inspector named Jones, who had been unable to piece together any information other than that the murders had all unmistakeably been committed by the same person. 

“You weren’t involved?” John asks. 

Sherlock shakes his head. “They kept it out of the news. I wasn’t particularly involved with the police yet, not before Lestrade.”

“So what makes them think this is the same person?”

Sherlock reels off the reasons. “The method of murder,” he starts. “The victims are all hanged. Secondly, the locations were always rural. A barn, a field, a woodshed, that sort of thing. Thirdly, the victims were all blond-haired women between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-eight and bore a certain resemblance to one another.”

“And this triple homicide is, what, three blonds in their mid-twenties who have been hanged somewhere out in the country?” John notices at this point that they are leaving the city. He doesn’t drive and never leaves central London any more, so he doesn’t know which motorway it is and wasn’t paying attention when Sherlock leaned in the driver’s window to say where they were going before getting in. 

“Precisely.” Sherlock’s eyes take on that particular gleam again. “Surrey. A tiny place called Ripley, some pasture near there. Three young women, all with blond hair, all hanged from the doorway of a barn.”

“Okay,” John says. “But then the murders stopped, so… why would the killer wait for ten years and then start all over again?”

Sherlock shrugs, looking out the window. “I don’t know, but that’s a good question.”

“And why three this time?”

“Again, good question. I don’t know. Yet.”

John subsides into silence and watches the cityscape fade and the country appear. When they arrive, Lestrade meets them, starts talking as he leads them through a deserted farm yard, then through a small field to the hay shelter at the back. The sight of the three bodies is shocking and sad. Sherlock neglected to mention that they would be naked, unless this was new or he hadn’t known. He vaguely listens to Lestrade, whose narrative of what they already know (or think they know, as Sherlock would say), is punctuated by short sounds from Sherlock as he absorbs it. Sherlock then asks about forensics from the first four murders, wants to know if they checked for skin cells on the rope used to hang the women, wants to see the records. Lestrade explains that the records are still being un-red-taped and sent over, adds with a touch of embarrassment that he should have had someone do that sooner. Sherlock doesn’t berate him, just looks up at the three bodies swinging in the light wind. His eyes narrow, probably just against the light, John thinks; he wouldn’t be shocked or probably saddened, either. Just curious. Once this would have bothered John immensely; now he is used to it. Besides, he knows that Sherlock cares deeply and intensely about some things. The fact that he doesn’t choose to express it in overt and time-wasting emotional displays (or at least, this is how John imagines he would think of them) doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care. He simply chooses to divert his caring into practical application. In retrospect, he was surprised that it took him that long to figure this out. 

Sherlock says his name and starts walking toward the bodies. John follows, under the impression that Lestrade hadn’t finished talking just yet, but Lestrade just catches his eye and gives a wry smile.

“You doing all right, then?” Lestrade asks as John walks past him. 

John gives him a smile. “Yeah. Good now.”

Lestrade squints at him. “Better than before, I’d guess. Didn’t have much of a chance to catch up the other week, at the lumber factory. Everything back to normal with you two ? Used to having him back yet?”

“I suppose, yeah,” John says, not wanting to get into it, eyes on Sherlock’s retreating coat. He gestures vaguely. “I’d better…”

“Right, go on, then,” Lestrade says, dropping it, leaving John to hurry away. 

Sherlock asks the forensics team if they will lower the bodies. The medical team is already on standby for their own examination, but Lestrade will have cleared the way for Sherlock and John to have their own look first. John crouches down near the first body, examines the rope marks on the next, the fingernail beds and the whites of the eyes and confirms that hanging was the cause of death indeed. He also identifies a puncture mark on the left thumb. When he mentions this, one of the younger officers ticks something off on a clipboard and frowns. He finds the same puncture marks on the other two victims and instructs the same young officer to get started on the blood work, as he is sure that they were injected with something. He notices then that neither Anderson nor Donovan are present. He thinks about asking Lestrade about this and decides to do it some other time, maybe over a pint and when Sherlock is not there. They have never discussed Donovan’s involvement in the whole… Thing, and in a group hardly seems the place to do it. 

Lestrade comes over now to talk to Sherlock, who fires off a load of rapid-fire information about where each woman had been prior to her death (none related, no connection between them other than physical resemblance, apparently), tentatively confirms that it is the same killer and suggests they look into deaths of other women prior to the first murder seven years ago that could have resembled these three and the earlier four. Lestrade agrees, says he’ll send anything relevant over to Baker Street, and just like that, they are cleared to leave. It has only been forty minutes, tops. Lestrade sends them back to London in one of the force’s cars. 

Sherlock is quiet in the car, not texting or googling, just watching the countryside go by. After a bit, he says, without looking at John, “It’s nice out here.”

The remark is so uncharacteristic, so wholly out of place, that John is truly startled. “What?”

Sherlock turns his head and smiles, as though knowing exactly what John is thinking. “Is that really so surprising?” he asks mildly, just a hint of chiding beneath the tone. “That I could find the countryside beautiful?”

“No, of course not,” John says, still feeling like he missed a step somewhere. “I always just pictured you as more of a city person, that’s all.”

“Oh, I am,” Sherlock agrees, turning back to the window. “Maybe one day, though. Not here. Perhaps further east. Sussex, maybe.”

“All right,” John says, feeling strange about the concept of Sherlock leaving London. Slightly empty. He can’t imagine Sherlock is a fantastic correspondent. He feels a tad bleak. 

“It’s a great motivator, isn’t it?” 

Sherlock is still speaking to the window. John looks over at him. “What is?”

“Love.”

This takes John a moment, to follow the leap. He works it out, though. “You mean the murders?” When Sherlock makes a sound of agreement, he goes on. “That’s what you reckon? They were killed because they looked like someone the killer knew? That’s why you told Lestrade to look for unsolved murders from before the first one?”

“Unsolved deaths,” Sherlock corrects, looking at him again. “Do you see, John?”

“Er – maybe.” John isn’t completely sure, to be honest. 

“She died, whomever she was,” Sherlock says, agreeing there. “But it’s possible the loss, the grief drove the killer mad. It happens.”

John feels his throat tighten, the anger making an unscheduled reappearance. “Yeah,” he says shortly. “I know it does.” He turns to look out his own window, not trusting himself to say any more just then. He can feel Sherlock’s eyes on him, gauging, thinking, can practically hear the wheels turning. 

Oddly, Sherlock doesn’t share whatever deductions he is forming. Instead, he reaches over and pats John on the arm, once, firmly, then desists at once. 

After a bit, John clears his throat and makes an effort at conversation. “So, Sussex,” he says. “Why Sussex, specifically?”

When he looks at Sherlock, he sees that Sherlock has still been watching him this whole time, something strangely careful in his guarded expression. It seems to take him a moment to realise that John has spoken, but then he blinks and begins talking about an eccentric great-uncle Gerald’s bee-keeping farm in Sussex, which he hadn’t seen since the age of eleven (after that he’d always been at boarding school and spent summers at home), but had fond memories of it. As he speaks, John tries to imagine Sherlock living in the country and keeping bees. The thought is immensely amusing but he thinks he does a fairly good job of keeping his face neutral, listening to Sherlock talking about his uncle’s odd dinner table behaviours. _Oh God, it must run in the family_ , he thinks, then has to consciously work at not guffawing at that, too. The amusement eases the knot that has formed in his gut from before, from Sherlock talking about leaving London, and then reminding John of what grief could do to a person. Grief and love. 

He reaches over and takes Sherlock’s pulse without thinking about it. Sherlock looks down at John’s hand on his wrist, but doesn’t say anything about it. After a bit, John lets go and they turn back to their respective windows. 

***

Lestrade calls Sherlock later to say that they’ve found a handful of mysterious deaths from prior to the first murder seven years ago. He wasn’t sure how far back to go, but Sherlock tells him it’s all right and asks if they should come down to the Yard. Evidently the answer is yes; Sherlock stands up and walks from the armchair to his coat as he hangs up, eyes going to John as he slips the phone into his jacket pocket. “We’re wanted,” he says. 

“Right, okay,” John says, glancing at the clock. It is nine in the evening. “Now?” Of course now; otherwise Sherlock wouldn’t have put his coat on. He gets up. 

Sherlock doesn’t respond, having already deduced that John must know that the answer to his question was obvious and didn’t require one. But he does actually wait for John to put his coat on before going down to hail a taxi. 

At NSY, Lestrade shows them into a small office with a generous stack of file folders sitting on the desk. “These are the cases my people found,” he says. “I don’t know if any of it will lead to anything, but just say the word if you want some more.”

Sherlock inserts himself into the space between one of the chairs and the desk. He makes a vague-sounding affirmative noise, hands already lifting the first file. 

Lestrade waits a moment longer, just to make sure that Sherlock is not going to say anything else, then glances at John. “You need anything?” he asks, knowing by now to direct this at John; Sherlock’s mind is only on the files now. “Coffee or something?”

It must be about nine-thirty by now. It could be a long night. “Sure, yeah,” John says. “I’ll come with you.” He looks at Sherlock, contemplates asking, then decides to just get him a coffee and he can drink it if he wants to. Lestrade catches his eye, mouth twisting a little as he gathers what John is thinking and jerks his chin toward the small kitchen at the end of the floor. 

Lestrade pours out the coffee that was in the carafe, rinses it out, and starts preparing a new pot. John leans against the door frame and watches, arms crossed over his chest. “So,” Lestrade says, “I’m guessing you’ll probably be here for awhile.”

“Probably all night,” John agrees. “I’ve already cancelled at the surgery tomorrow.”

A short laugh. “They must love that.”

John shrugs. “It’s not my priority and they know it. It’s fine. Look,” he says, changing topics, “can I ask about something?”

Lestrade shrugs, pushes the button on the machine and the drip begins. “Go on, then.”

“Where are Donovan and Anderson?” John asks, wondering if this is a sensitive subject, if he should be asking at all. 

Lestrade straightens up and goes to lean against the counter, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his trouser. He looks tired. “Anderson was transferred,” he says. “Another division. All desk work.”

“Really,” John says, surprised. He’d come to share Sherlock’s opinion of Anderson’s competence and wondered why it never seemed to garner the attention of his superiors, Lestrade included. 

Perhaps Lestrade catches a hint of this, because his voice goes rather sardonic. “It’s rather hard to find good officers these days,” he says. “Anyway, I don’t know what you knew about the fall-out of… well, all the business with the kidnapping and Moriarty and Richard Brook and all that, as far as the Yard was concerned. I suppose you were pretty… wrapped up in other things just then.”

John remembers with a lurch the long, empty days of sitting in his chair and staring at Sherlock’s, then staring at the walls in Harry’s flat, then eventually returning to Baker Street and resuming his stare at Sherlock’s chair. “No, I don’t know what happened,” he says, turning his mind firmly away from all that and back to the present. 

Lestrade sighs. “Well, as soon as they found Moriarty’s body, of course they ran ballistics. Only his prints were on the gun and the bullet was fired from it. There were no signs of a struggle whatsoever. It didn’t explain why Sherlock, er, you know. But it seemed pretty clear that he hadn’t killed Moriarty. I mean, you remember the field day the press had with all of it, all the ‘unanswered questions’ about the suicide, all that. But, uh, Mycroft sorted out the identity issue, showed us that Richard Brook really was the false identity, even if we never found actual proof of Moriarty’s. He’d erased every record of himself, and sometimes there’s no getting that back, but at least we figured out that Richard Brook was fake. Which meant that Sherlock was pretty well cleared. I mean, I told you that part, right, but I guess it seemed too late by then.” He’s poured three cups of coffee while he was talking and pushes two of them over to John now. 

John doesn’t touch them yet. “So, what happened next?”

“It got ugly,” Lestrade admits. “I called both Anderson and Donovan into my office and let them have it. I suppose it was me I should have been angry at, and I was. I should never have doubted him. He was my friend and I let their doubts persuade me. I never really believed it, but I should have stood up for him from the start. Anderson, well, his work was always shoddy at best. I got him shifted sideways into another department, just so I wouldn’t have to work with him again. But Donovan… well, I found out how much she’d been smearing Sherlock’s name, and not just after the kidnapping. I guess I’d always thought it was just good-natured ribbing, but it wasn’t, was it?”

“No,” John says, a little more sharply than he’d meant to. “It never was.”

“Right,” Lestrade says. He picks up his cup and takes a sip, blowing on it first. “I fired her.”

John is startled. For a moment his mouth just opens and closes again. Then, “You _fired_ her? You actually did?”

Lestrade shrugs again, cup still poised at his mouth. “It’s libel, isn’t it? In my eyes, not knowing he was still alive, of course, her actions contributed directly to the downfall of one of the greatest men of our time, who was innocent of everything he’d been accused of, and it was Donovan who helped bring it about. I mean, I know it was ultimately Moriarty, but she sure did her part to contribute. I was angry, John. Furious, in fact. Especially when it all cleared up and I realised what an idiot I’d been to doubt him in the first place. What does it matter what his intentions are, whether he cares about justice and truth or if it’s all just an elaborate puzzle to keep his big brain from getting bored? The point is, he solves crimes and does a damned good job of it, and he does it for free. Who cares whether it’s altruism or a hobby. It doesn’t matter. I had never questioned it before and never should have.”

This is a longer speech than John has ever heard Lestrade make all in one go like this, and the bitter note in his tone makes John almost wince in sympathy. “The thing is,” he says fairly, “it’s hard not to question it. All of it. It’s not just the big moments of brilliance, either – it would take living with him to see how it couldn’t possibly be an act, because it’s just on all the time. Little, stupid things that he can figure out, and not just the science-y stuff, like the velocity that a swallow that flew into our front window must have been flying based on the oil smear left on the glass. He once deduced my sister Harry’s favourite flower based on her allergies and a childhood holiday I’d told him about in passing months before. Or that I can see twenty-twenty out of my left eye and twenty-five-twenty out of my right, just by looking at my eyes and the angles I hold newspapers and books at for a long time. The brilliance is real, and most of the time, that’s the only way he’s thinking and the interpersonal stuff gets lost on the way. He knows how to behave if he thinks about it, but he so often just doesn’t. Or didn’t,” John adds. “He’s got a bit better. I think.”

Lestrade shakes his head. “Still, though, I should have stood up for him. I made a right pig’s ear of that whole business. I was surprised when he called one day and said he was back and wondered if I needed help with anything. I’d read about it by then, maybe just a couple of days before, and I’d tried to call, but his old number wasn’t in service and I didn’t know if he’d want to hear from me, anyway.”

John thinks of what Sherlock told him about the whole rooftop business with Moriarty. “No, he would have wanted to,” he says with absolute certainty. “You’re his friend. One of his only friends. Did you not know that? That you were one of Moriarty’s targets?”

Lestrade ducks his face. “Yeah, but only because Mycroft told me, later on.”

John feels his brows furrow. “You talk to Mycroft a lot?”

“Now and then.” Lestrade directs this to the floor. “He, er, had a lot to explain to me about that whole case. I guess he figured that since Sherlock was… gone, someone should put me in the picture. He was the one who explained everything after Sherlock came back.”

John stares at Lestrade and thinks that they should have talked more. They’d had the occasional pint now and then, but Sherlock had been their common denominator, and without him… it always felt like it was all they had to talk about and it had been too painful, at least for John. He decides the mood has become too heavy. “Well,” he says, “he’s very happy to have a big case again. Speaking of which, I should probably get in there and see if he wants any help. Or coffee. Either one.”

Lestrade grins. “It’s good to have you two back around again.”

John smiles back, stirs two spoonfuls of sugar into one of the cups, and carries them back down the hallway. 

Sherlock looks up when he comes in, frowning slightly. “John. Where did you go?”

John gestures with the cups. “Coffee. And I got chatting with Lestrade. Sorry. Didn’t think you’d notice.”

He’d meant it lightly (on the surface, at least), but Sherlock’s frown deepens at this. He accepts the cup, not flinching when John’s fingers touch his. “You know I’m lost without you,” he says mildly, though the lines at the bridge of his nose haven’t relaxed yet.

John feels his mouth half-smile. “You want some help going through these?” He gestures at the stack. 

“Please,” Sherlock says instantly. “It’s tedious in the extreme.”

“Oh?” John sits down across from him and picks up a folder. “I should have thought you’d like reading about old murders.”

“Murders, yes, but most of these are just accidents that weren’t reported fully. Probably someone like Anderson wrote most of these reports and missed most of the pertinent details. This death, a supposed suicide, was obviously an electrical accident, caused by inserting a knife into a toaster.” Sherlock moves a file and gestures at another. “This ‘mysterious’ death is nothing more than an undiagnosed heart attack that happened during a domestic argument. And so on.” He picks up the coffee and sips it. “Thank you,” he says, as an afterthought. 

Afterthought or not, he doesn’t usually thank John for small things like this. John notices, appreciates it. “You’re welcome,” he says, trying not to sound pleased by it. He smiles at Sherlock. “So. Young women?” He wonders if now is the best time to mention Anderson and Donovan and decides to save it for another time. Right now is Work time, obviously. Even he knows that. 

Sherlock takes half the stack and puts it down on John’s side of the desk. “None with a resemblance or an actual mystery so far. But the night is young.”

His eyes gleam and he smiles at John. And despite that part of him would really much rather be at home watching the news with Sherlock, John smiles back, sits down, and starts rifling through a file. 

***

They leave with a lead around four in the morning. Lestrade left long ago, sticking his head in at midnight or so to say that he was off. John falls asleep in the taxi and wakes up to find his head on Sherlock’s shoulder, his right arm wedged around Sherlock’s left, the fingers of his right hand clamped over the pulse point of Sherlock’s wrist. The only thing outweighing his embarrassment as he detaches himself is his astonishment that Sherlock allowed it to happen at all, didn’t dislodge him. Neither of them says anything more than good night as John stumbles upstairs to his room and Sherlock disappears into the sitting room, likely with no intentions of sleeping at all. 

***

John wakes around noon and, still yawning, wanders downstairs to shower. Sherlock is sitting at the desk, still wearing the same clothes as the day before: so. He didn’t sleep, then. John still can’t get over how he does it. “Morning,” he says, already in the hall leading to the bathroom, Sherlock’s distracted-sounding response drifting after him as he closes the door. 

He feels better after the shower and goes into the kitchen to find something to eat. He has missed breakfast and decides to move straight on to lunch. “Have you eaten?” he asks. 

“Mmm.”

“Was that a yes-mmm or a no-mmm?” John goes to the doorway, eyebrows up, waiting for a more specific reply. 

Sherlock glances up, looks back at the laptop screen. “I had some toast.”

“How long ago?”

A shrug. “I don’t know. A few hours.” 

This could mean anywhere from not long after they got home to two or three hours ago. Not recently, then. “Hungry?”

Sherlock shrugs again. “Not really.”

“I’ll make lunch.” John goes back into the kitchen and Sherlock doesn’t reply. _Not really_ means that Sherlock could be persuaded to feed himself if food were presented. _No_ means definitely not hungry/will become annoyed if pestered with repeated offers of food (/naggings to eat), and _Yes_ is clear and only comes after a case is completed, usually. Except for those cases that go on for weeks, in which case Sherlock will impatiently concede to hunger after a day or two and eat takeaway curry at indecent speeds while simultaneously texting or googling, inhaling food while crouched over a screen. He is a tidy eater, but it’s the speed that John finds disconcerting. If he only wouldn’t go that long without eating in the first place… but this line of thinking is useless. It’s always all or nothing with Sherlock, isn’t it? He sets about making something easy, grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken rice soup. He discovered once, sometime when Sherlock had a cold, that Sherlock has an aversion to the noodles in chicken noodle soup. He is unsurprisingly quite picky and his aversions know no apparent limit. There is no greater offender than yogurt, however. He will leave a room if someone in it opens a container of yogurt. John stopped even trying to buy it. He wasn’t that fond of it, anyway. 

He brings Sherlock a sandwich, a bowl of soup, and a cup of tea and leaves them on the side of the desk within reach and takes his own to the sofa with the newspaper, noticing with quiet satisfaction a few minutes later when Sherlock absentmindedly begins eating the sandwich. The tea will be forgotten, but he often drinks it cold, anyway. Normal. This feels normal. John tells himself to notice this, that he is moderately happy right now. 

“Getting anywhere with the lead from last night?” he asks, spoon clinking against his soup bowl, eyes on the long line of Sherlock’s back. Sometime during the night, he took off the suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of the white button-down. John notices for the five thousandth time how snugly it sits across the muscled back. His spoon slides from his fingers with a clatter and he hastily picks it up and makes himself stop looking at Sherlock’s back. 

Something in Sherlock’s brain seems to register the sound as a reminder of the soup’s existence and he picks it up and turns on the chair to look at John. “Maybe,” he said. “It looks like an accident but it would be good to have more information.”

“The girl at the farm?” John says, struggling to remember the details. It had been very late when Sherlock announced that he had something and that they might as well go home and get some sleep. 

“Yes. Alice Farrell. Seventeen-year-old, died in an accident on a farm.”

“How did she die?” 

Sherlock puts the soup down, likely forgetting it for good. “It’s not entirely clear, but it seems like they think she got tangled in some baler twine somehow and ended up hanging herself. There was some question over whether or not it was an accident, but according to the report, the twine was very tangled and it would have been difficult to rig like that on purpose, and besides, she had no history of depression, nothing traumatic had recently happened; she appeared to be a fairly normal seventeen-year-old girl.”

John wonders fleetingly what on earth Sherlock would know about normal seventeen-year-old girls, but lets it go. “Okay. So, accident?”

“I think so. Here.” Sherlock sifts through the file and plucks out a photograph, passes it to John. “Look at this.”

John puts down the paper and takes it. The girl had long blond hair and was smiling, clearly a school photograph. Her features were fine, small-nosed, large-eyed, pretty. She definitely bore a general resemblance to the other victims. Sherlock hands him another photograph, the police photo of the death. She is nude and suspended from the rafters of a barn in a knotted mass of twine, just as Sherlock had said. He frowns. “Why was she nude?”

“Don’t know yet.” Sherlock shifts some more paper, opens another file, and pulls out some more photos. “These are photos of the first four murders. Two in Sussex, one in Surrey, one in Kent.”

The four women all look just the same, except that they have been hanged with a rope noose, the traditional way. They all had long, fair hair and were nude, close-ups showing small-boned facial features and large eyes. “I see,” he says. “Where was the first girl found?”

“Sussex,” Sherlock says. “South. A farm about ten miles from Eastbourne.”

Eastbourne sounds vaguely familiar. “Is that close to where your great-uncle’s bee-keeping place was?” John asks, curious. 

Sherlock smiles, apparently pleased that John remembered this. “His place was east of Eastbourne, about five miles, I think, but yes, same general area. Can you get away for a day or two?”

John blinks. “To Sussex?” he clarifies. “Yes, I don’t see why not.”

“Excellent. Train service down there can be spotty, I thought we could hire a car.”

John remembers Sherlock’s driving abilities with a slight touch of alarm. When Sherlock pays attention, he is a very good driver; the problems came in at the other times. “We could take the train,” he says instead. “I could check the schedules.”

Sherlock hears the unspoken objection, lips pressing slightly, but he apparently decides to let it go. “All right,” he says, not arguing. “We’ll still need a car once we’re in Eastbourne, though.”

“How long are we going to stay?”

Sherlock shrugs. “That depends on how long it takes, what we find, et cetera. Do you want to choose the hotel?”

John agrees easily enough. “Eastbourne is on the water, isn’t it? Maybe we could stay near the beach.”

He waits for Sherlock to point out that the beach in October won’t be that enticing, but instead he just tells John to choose whatever he likes. John goes to get his laptop and starts hunting. They leave the next morning with clothing for about three days (at least in John’s case; he has no earthly idea what Sherlock might have deemed necessary for this trip), just to be safe. John booked their room at the inn for two nights and mentioned the possibility of needing a third, and the manager had been very amenable about it. It was the off-season, after all. He remembers how odd Sherlock was in Dartmoor about their room at the inn, seeming surprised and slightly miffed when John had said something about _rooms_ , not _room_ on the train on the way there, and said something John couldn’t remember exactly about them surely being capable of sharing a room after all this time. He seemed stiff at the time, looking out the window, and John had realised that perhaps Sherlock was hurt somehow. It seemed odd; after all, they hardly slept in the same bedroom at home, but John had decided to just humour him. He’d asked what was available when they arrived and Kerry had replied that there was, in fact, only one free room, with two twin beds. John had said that was fine and accepted it. In the end, Sherlock had only slept there the second night, anyway; God only knew where he’d been the first night, after their argument. He’d slept the second night, though. Turned out he wasn’t a snorer, which John already knew, but now had definitive, up-close proof of it. He’d seen Sherlock sleeping countless times on the sofa, but had never passed an entire night with him. 

Thinking back to all that, he books a room with two double beds and hopes he can actually sleep with Sherlock so close by without it driving him entirely mad. 

***

The touching thing is getting worse, he realises on the train. He has been doing nothing but stare out the window for at least thirty minutes when he becomes aware that his hand is resting on Sherlock’s knee. Again, he is both embarrassed that it happened – without even being asleep this time! – and amazed again that Sherlock didn’t move it. Neither of them says anything when John awkwardly withdraws his hand and puts it on his own knee, face warm. Sherlock is reading an article on soil alkaline in various counties of England and continues to act as though John’s hand hasn’t just molested his knee. John clears his throat and focuses on the countryside once more, and it occurs to him that Sherlock is just being nice. He knows. He must know. How could he not, unless he was totally blind? And blind is the last thing that Sherlock Holmes would ever be, so clearly he knows, and has just decided to be nice and not say anything about it, out of respect for their friendship and perhaps a rare spot of tact for John’s feelings. 

This makes him feel worse. 

He can’t decide whether the silence between them is companionable or loaded. Perhaps it’s only he thinking about it, while Sherlock is fully immersed in his boring article. The swaying of the train is soothing, though, and eventually he begins to relax again, but is careful to keep himself from falling asleep, lest he wind up on Sherlock’s shoulder again. 

The little inn is nice, more of a bed and breakfast, really. It is a three-minute walk to the beach. Sherlock has managed not to crash the rental car between the train station and the inn. John unpacks quickly. 

“Are we heading out to the farm right away?” he asks. 

“Might as well,” Sherlock says, closing his small case. “I thought we could talk to the new owners, find out what they heard about it all. They bought the house not long after the accident, according to the file. The girl’s parents moved to the city.”

“All right,” John says. “Should I bring anything?”

“No. We should be fine.”

“Gun?”

“Never a bad idea, but this is a very cold case,” Sherlock points out. 

John decides to leave it in the room and follows Sherlock to the car. The drive out to the farm is actually quite lovely, he thinks. He prompts Sherlock to keep talking about his great-uncle’s house, just to keep him in the present and paying attention to the road. It works; Sherlock drives well and talks freely at the same time. John listens to him and thinks that he wishes it could be like this all the time. Despite his somewhat depressing thoughts from the train, he feels moderately content again. Peaceful, even. 

The house stands alone on its plot of land, the barn visible just through the back. Sherlock had checked and found out that the house and farm had been sold not long after the girl’s death, the parents moving to London to be closer to their son, then attending London College. Sherlock parks and knocks at the front door. An older man opens the door, and after Sherlock explains their errand, invites them in. A matching older woman sets about making tea. 

“Happened not long before we got here,” the man says, after the preliminary chat has been dealt with. “Fact is, that’s why we bought the place. No one from around here wanted it. We were retiring from Exeter, wanted to be close to the sea. It sold for half what it should have done, and that’s a fact. We weren’t superstitious. It was real shame, but worked out well for us, didn’t it?” This last is directed at the wife. 

John leans forward. “So you heard a lot about the… death, then?”

“Oh yes,” the wife chips in. “Everyone was still talking about it – did for months, didn’t they, Warren?”

“They did,” her spouse confirms. “And it was in the papers and everything.”

“I saw a few of the reports,” Sherlock says modestly. John knows that Sherlock has read all of the reports but is making an effort to sound normal. He finds this privately amusing. “Did people think it was an accident?”

“Must have been, mustn’t it?” the wife says, fretfully refilling John’s cup. “She was all tangled up in that string or rope, must have got stuck in it somehow.”

“Why would she have been nude?” Sherlock sets his cup down with an air of finality, clearly finished with his tea. It isn’t strong enough, John has noticed, but he will drink tea in most forms. 

“Oh, that’s easy enough,” Warren says, shifting in his seat. “There’s a little swimming hole just through the trees behind the barn. They reckon she must have left her clothes in the barn or something happened to them while she was in swimming. Then tripped or something, got herself stuck like that.”

Sherlock frowns, the bridge of his nose wrinkling. “Any ideas on why there would have been a knot of baler twine hanging from the entrance to the barn?”

“Oh yes, that we know,” the wife assures him. “Mr Farrell, the girl’s father, used to hang herbs and onions and that to dry there, and it must have just been that a big bunch was there and got tangled in the wind, and somehow the girl walked into it and got herself wrapped up in it.”

John sets his cup down, too. “That doesn’t make sense,” he says. “How could she have just walked into it without seeing it?”

The couple exchanges a glance and the man shrugs. “Don’t know, do we? But nobody wished her any harm. Apparently a lot of her school friends came for the funeral, everyone always said how well-attended it was. Everyone liked her, it seems. Nice young girl, pretty thing. Good grades, friendly. Just a tragic accident.”

Sherlock crosses one knee over the other. “Any friends particularly memorable, according to local talk? Any male friends? A boyfriend?”

Another look, surprised this time. The wife speaks up. “Funny you should say,” she says. “There was talk of a young chap, wasn’t there? Not a boyfriend, but besotted, you might say. Allan. The Farrells said he would come to the house afterward, he lived not far from here, would go out to the barn and just look at the place where she died. After awhile they told him to stop. Felt bad for the young man, he must have fancied her.”

John sees the light flicker in Sherlock’s eyes. “Allan what?” Sherlock is suddenly leaning forward, demanding. 

Warren looks a bit startled by the intensity in Sherlock’s eyes and tone. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “Never met him, did we? This is all just hearsay, what all the villagers were saying down round the pub and that.”

Sherlock stands. “Who could tell me?”

The wife gets to her feet, too. “You might try the school, or maybe the police station, or the church… maybe the church, Warren? What do you think?”

Warren nods slowly. “Those kids all went to the local church and the rector was here back when it all happened. Small church, everyone knew each other.”

“Great,” John says. “We’ll try that. Thanks very much for the tea.”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, his mind obviously elsewhere, racing ahead. “Thank you.”

John asks for directions to the church, Sherlock already striding toward the door, thanks the couple again, and they leave. Outside, he asks Sherlock if he wants to see the barn before they go. Having already obtained permission for this at the outset, he figures Sherlock will want to leave no stone unturned. 

Sherlock considers this. “Yes,” he decides. “There won’t be anything there now as far as evidence goes, but it would be good to see it anyway.”

They set off, following a path that starts behind the house and leads through a field toward the barn. Sherlock walks ahead of him, coat tails swirling behind him as he walks. John watches them, mesmerised, then trips over a large stone, cursing. Sherlock turns swiftly and catches his arm before John can faceplant in the dirt. John apologises, feeling ridiculous, and Sherlock just shakes his head, smiles, and pats him on the shoulder before turning and walking off again. Pity, John thinks: this is pity. He can’t even walk through a bloody field without Sherlock. 

They explore the swimming hole, now mostly dried up and ringed with dry grasses, and the barn itself. It hasn’t been in use for some time; the farm land lies fallow and unplanted and the barn is mostly empty. No ominous knots of baler twine, no dangerous-looking farming equipment. Sherlock nonetheless takes everything in, calculates the height of the low entranceway, sniffs at some dried hay piled in a corner and pronounces it to be clover hay. John watches, listens to his observations, and to the wind blowing lightly over the fields. Apart from Sherlock’s footsteps on the hollow wooden floorboards, his voice, and the wind itself, it is perfectly silent out here. He understands how a place like this could appeal to _him_ , but the thought of Sherlock moving out to the country doesn’t make sense at all. Wouldn’t he get terribly bored?

He realises Sherlock has stopped talking and is looking at him with consternation. “Sorry,” John says, snapping back into focus. 

“What were you thinking about? You’re frowning,” Sherlock says, mirroring his expression.

John shrugs. “I don’t know, I was just thinking that I thought you’d be bored if you moved way out here, with nothing to do.”

The frown deepens. “What?”

John waves his hands around vaguely. “The other day, in Surrey, you said you had thought about moving out to the country. I just thought… I don’t know. That there wouldn’t be enough for you to do.”

Sherlock gives him a strange smile. “Well, I’d like to retire _some_ day,” he says. “I don’t see myself consulting into my eighties.”

The light goes on for John. “Oh! You meant later!”

“ _Much_ later,” Sherlock assures him dryly. Then, “That’s what you were frowning about? You thought I was going to move away?”

“Yeah,” John admits. “Sorry. Bit stupid. It’s just… I only just got you back. I didn’t like the thought of losing you again already.”

Something in Sherlock’s face changes in a way that John doesn’t quite understand. He walks over to the entranceway where John is standing, squinting a little as the sunlight hits his face after the dimness of the barn. “John,” he says, perhaps a touch uncertainly, “I… assumed that you… I didn’t mean now. I wasn’t planning on leaving London or Baker Street.”

Everything that John feels, has been trying to hide, rushes to his face before he can prevent it and he spends a moment manfully wrestling his face into a controlled expression. He manages a tight nod. “Okay,” he says, hoping it comes out lightly. It doesn’t, quite, but it sounds all right, he thinks. Not too emotional. Without meaning to, he grasps Sherlock by the shoulders, hard. Sherlock smiles a little and returns the gesture. It’s too much, too focused – Sherlock will surely see if he hasn’t already, if John just lets him standing there staring into his eyes. He lets go abruptly and turns back toward the house. “So,” he says, clearing his throat. “The church next?”

“Yes.” Sherlock sounds perfectly composed. John wishes he felt that calm. He leads the way this time, and managed not to fall over any rocks this time. Small victories. 

***

The rector is in and tells them enough to confirm Sherlock’s theory, but there is a twist: apparently Allan Gainsford had become troubled after the death of Alice Farrell, eventually becoming so strange that he was sectioned for some time. He was eventually released, treated as a harmless, eccentric sort, working as a groundskeeper through a program for the mentally disabled. Sherlock asks if he worked somewhere locally and the rector answers that he thinks that the specific locations change, but that they could ask the government agency. 

They thank the rector and leave. It is three in the afternoon now and very warm for mid-October. John suggests they go see the beach. He knows it is too cold to swim (though he is contemplating it anyway; early-morning cold water swims were routine during his pre-Afghanistan training and he thinks he could still handle it) but just being in the sea air would be nice, he thinks. Sherlock actually agrees to this, to his surprise (though only after confirming that the government agency is closed on Monday afternoons) and they drive back to the inn and walk to the beach. John brings a towel just in case, if only to sit on. He hadn’t packed anything to swim in, anyway. He changes into a t-shirt and Sherlock changes into the t-shirt he sleeps in and jeans. He does actually own jeans but almost never wears them, as his two modes are drifting around the flat in pyjamas and a dressing gown or dressed in one of those crisp, expensively-cut suits. John is surprised that Sherlock even packed them, but possibly he suspected John would make him play tourist if there was time. 

There is a long boardwalk path running parallel to the sea and they start there. After a bit, John says he wants to walk closer to the water. He takes off his socks and shoes and rolls up his denims to the knee, leaves his footwear just beside the boardwalk and heads toward the sea. After a moment, Sherlock joins him, also barefoot. John looks at his feet and grins. Sherlock looks self-conscious and also looks at his feet, not saying anything. John touches him on the arm, catches himself and lets go, resumes walking toward the water. 

Despite the breeze, the sun is even warmer close to the water, though the water itself is bracingly cold on his bare feet. Sherlock stays on the wet sand to his left and observes after awhile that John’s feet must be freezing. He seems to be looking at them with a considerable amount of interest or possibly concern, even after John assures him that they’re fine. (Sherlock is right, though; his feet _are_ cold.) He moves to the warm, dry sand after a little and Sherlock follows him in seeming relief that he can’t quite disguise. John grins to himself, particularly at watching Sherlock’s apparent internal dismay at his sandy feet as they walk back to their shoes. Something seems to have lifted in his chest since Sherlock told him he wasn’t going to leave London. He doesn’t know for how long that meant, but the assurance works nonetheless.

***

It takes him a long time to fall asleep, aware that Sherlock is not sleeping yet either, three meters away in the other bed, his breathing still awake in the dark. When John finally does sleep, he dreams of the Fall. In his dream, he doesn’t know he is dreaming. He is standing on the pavement in front of St. Bart’s again, watching Sherlock tip forward, arms outstretched, falling endlessly. When his body reaches the pavement, the earth cracks open, bits of concrete exploding outward like water, Sherlock’s body plummeting downward toward the earth’s core, disappearing. John wakes with a start, heart in his mouth, panic gripping him. 

“John.” Sherlock is there, crossing the small space between the beds and bending over him. “Wake up. It’s all right.”

He must have cried out, then. John does not even feel the humiliation of this over his pounding heart and the panic that will not release him. The relief of being awake, of knowing it was only a dream, is still warring with his grief, the overwhelming sense of loss and regret and pain. They hadn’t let him see Sherlock’s body after. He understands why now, but he didn’t then, didn’t for those three years. That was what the body falling through the earth had been about, his feeling of helpless frustration when they wouldn’t even let him see Sherlock’s body. To confirm for himself that the pulse had faded entirely, that the warmth had seeped from his skin. John hears himself make a sound not unlike a moan and digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. They are wet. 

There is a movement and Sherlock is sitting on the edge of his bed. “John,” he says again, softly. “It’s all right now.”

John makes himself exhale, shakily, nods to show that he is listening, tries to pull himself together. The tears are still pooling in his eyes and slipping down his cheeks. He swallows, trying to push the images out of his head, trying to breathe. 

“Was it Afghanistan?” Sherlock asks. The moonlight is coming in through the window and throwing his cheekbones into even sharper relief. 

John shakes his head. “The Fall,” he says, voice scraping in his throat and cracking. 

Sherlock’s face changes in the moonlight. He looks stricken. His inhalation is laboured, as though it is painful. He did apologise, when he first reappeared in John’s life again, and since then they have never spoken about it. Sherlock is not one to repeat himself, but now he closes his eyes as though he cannot even bear to look at John. “I’m sorry, John,” he says, his voice so low it is gravelly. “I… had no idea you would be so affected.”

John hates that his eyes and cheeks are still wet. His voice trembles. “No _idea_ – Sherlock – ”

“I knew that you would grieve,” Sherlock acknowledges, opening his eyes and still speaking very softly. “But – this – I didn’t realise. Perhaps I should have. I am sorry. Very sorry.”

Something about this makes John feel worse than ever. It’s the disappointment and anger all over again, that Sherlock didn’t tell him, never contacted him, and worst of all, didn’t even realise fully how it would make him feel, but also the overwhelming relief of having him just not be dead, having him back again. All the feelings that he has refused to think about, refused to let him feel, are flapping around his face like wings, suffocating him. He is really crying now, trying to say Sherlock’s name and failing. Sherlock shifts closer and takes John by the shoulders, pulls him into a clumsy hug. John clutches at him and weeps into his shoulder. He keeps seeing Sherlock falling forward off the roof and disappearing into a void, out of reach, lost forever. It’s ridiculous to feel this way _now_ – Sherlock is right here, holding him, and he should want to hit him more than he wants to hug back, but he doesn’t. The most important thing is that he has Sherlock back and would do anything to keep from losing him again. He doesn’t want to let go. Sherlock’s shoulders are slightly tensed; he doesn’t normally hug much, especially not in a prolonged fashion like this. John reluctantly eases his grip and tries to find his dignity, wiping his face with his fingers. “Sorry,” he mutters. 

“No,” Sherlock says swiftly. “You have nothing to apologise for.” He hesitates. “Do you want to go back to sleep?”

“Not yet.” John’s heart is still pounding. He remembers being afraid to sleep, after Afghanistan, afraid of the nightmares. It had been much the same after the Fall. He never had dreamed about it often, and hadn’t since Sherlock’s return. What triggered this, then? Just the thought of Sherlock moving away without him? 

Sherlock appears to be debating something internally. When he speaks, it lacks his usual surety. “I have noticed that you… have something of a penchant for checking my pulse,” he says carefully, as though treading on eggshells, ready to wince if John gets angry at his saying this. “Would it… help?” He holds out his right wrist, the one that John had tried so desperately to find a pulse in that day, the one he still regularly goes for first when he does it. So Sherlock has noticed that, too. Of course he has. 

John feels a bit ashamed to just do it so consciously and with Sherlock knowing about it, but he bites his lip and does it anyway, closing the fingers of his left hand around Sherlock’s. The pulse is steady and strong, reassuringly _there_ , Sherlock’s wrist firm and strong and warm and decidedly alive. And Sherlock is there with him, there in a strangely compassionate way that he never would have been before… Before. Perhaps he really does understand, or at least have a glimmer of what John has gone through. After a minute, John adds his other hand, forming a circle around Sherlock’s wrist. Sherlock lets him. He doesn’t say anything, just sits there and they both look at John’s fingers locked around Sherlock’s wrist and not at each other. Slowly John’s heartbeat begins to resume its normal rhythm and pace and the panic starts to seep from his muscles. His breathing begins to slow, too. 

When he wakes, it is light outside. He is immediately aware that he is not alone in bed; a long-limbed form is fitted into the space behind him, a heavy arm pressed to his chest. Sherlock’s arm. Because he is still holding Sherlock’s wrist, the arm trapped against his torso. He realises with embarrassment that he must have fallen asleep like that, and not wanting to disturb him, Sherlock just allowed him to go on sleeping without pulling his arm away. He can feel Sherlock’s slow, quiet, regular breaths on the back of his neck. It feels… extraordinary. Perfect. Wonderful. It feels exactly as he had imagined for years that it might, to wake up being – John hates this term, but doesn’t know a better way to think of it – spooned by Sherlock’s long torso and limbs. It feels comfortable, as though they have been sleeping together, in the literal sense, for years. He can still feel Sherlock’s pulse, which makes him feel calm and reassured. He can imagine what must have happened: he fell asleep, Sherlock eventually got sleepy and cautiously fitted himself into the small space between John and the side of the bed, probably on his side facing John, due to his arm being held captive. At some point John had turned on his side, facing away, and perhaps Sherlock had nudged him over. Or perhaps that was why Sherlock was curled so tightly into him; he was just trying not to fall out of bed. The blankets were only over John, since Sherlock had sat and then presumably lain down on top of them, so perhaps he’d been cold, too. 

John thinks that he should really move away and give Sherlock some space in more than one sense, but he can’t bring himself to do it. He does let go of Sherlock’s wrist, at least. His fingers are cramped from having held it so tightly all night. Muscles normally relax in sleep, but evidently not his, at least not last night. After he lets go, Sherlock’s breathing changes a little. He is waking up. John is sure that he will think about having fallen asleep in John’s bed a necessary result of the comforting process, given that John fell asleep before Sherlock could return to his own bed. Surely he will be logical about it and not get distant and aloof. Or worse. He doesn’t know how to handle this. Should he try apologising?

He can still feel Sherlock’s breath on the back of his neck and really doesn’t want Sherlock to move away. He hears Sherlock swallow, tongue wetting his mouth sleepily. “What time is it?” Sherlock murmurs into his neck. 

This is surprising: that Sherlock is awake enough to want to know the time and must realise his proximity to John and hasn’t moved yet. “I don’t know,” John says. “Morning.”

“Clearly.” Trace of dry amusement. Pause while Sherlock thinks. (Is he too sleepy to just get up and check his phone?) “Based on the angle of the shadows, I would say it’s around six.”

“Too early.” John still hasn’t opened his eyes. 

“Agreed.” It is all Sherlock says, and with that, he appears to drift back to sleep. 

John’s very amazement over this nearly keeps him awake, but instead, he allows himself to be lulled by Sherlock’s warm and reassuring presence and slips back into sleep, too. He does not have nightmares. 

***

The government office is a dead end; they flatly refuse to share any information on any of their clients, and as Sherlock is not exactly the police, he can hardly claim that Allan Gainsford is wanted for questioning in a police investigation. Besides, as John points out, if the man is legally insane, even if considered safe enough to be out and mingling in regular society, it would be hard to press charges now, anyway. Sherlock just shrugs and says that Lestrade can look into it. He seems relatively sure that Gainsford is the killer, and if he works with some program, he should be easy enough to track down. 

“But you’re curious, aren’t you?” John asks. “I mean, we don’t know why he suddenly started killing again, if it is him, or why he chose three victims this time.”

“True,” Sherlock agrees. “I am mostly certain that it is him. Perhaps he was kept in asylum those seven years and had a traumatic experience that reminded him of the event that set him off in the first place. But we can deal with that from London, I think.”

It is mid-afternoon. John checks his watch. “Are we going back now, then?”

“We can, if you want to,” Sherlock says. “Or we can stay the second night. It’s up to you. The Met is paying for it, anyway.”

John thinks about the previous night and wonders if it’s a good idea for him to be allowed to sleep in the same room as Sherlock again. Things have been remarkably un-weird and un-awkward since they woke up the second time. Sherlock had merely rolled off of his bed and collected his shower things, disappearing into the bathroom. John had stayed in bed until Sherlock was out and went to take his turn, and neither of them said anything about it. John had certainly thought about it a lot, but Sherlock is being determinedly regular, as though nothing out of the ordinary has happened. John makes up his mind. It may be foolish, but he wants to stay. “Let’s stay, then,” he says. 

Sherlock agrees immediately. “Of course, there is only the evening train and we would get home quite late. We might as well wait until the morning.”

John doesn’t point out that just the other night, they were at the Yard reading through files until four in the morning. “All right,” he says instead. “Do you want to walk around a bit, then? It’s a nice town.”

Sherlock agrees suspiciously quickly, and John has the awareness to realise that Sherlock is being too nice to him again. Pity. Or worry, perhaps. He is concerned about John and making an effort to make concessions. While it is nice in a way, it makes John feel wary. Suspicious, even. This is not allayed when, twenty minutes into their explorations of Eastbourne, Sherlock suggests that they are due for dinner with Harry and wonders if the weekend would be suitable. 

John is in over his head. No choice but to go with the tide, he supposes. 

***

After dinner, they go back to their room at the inn where John sits on his bed and tries to start a blog entry (he has taken up his blog again, as of their first case back), but finds that the only things he wants to write about are exactly the sorts of things he would never publish in a blog post, so he gives up and checks his email instead. Sherlock is sitting at the small table by the window, also on his laptop. Reading, not typing. After a bit, John suggests watching a movie and Sherlock agrees again. Again, this is suspiciously nice, but John likes it anyway. He suggests something suitably convoluted so that Sherlock won’t guess the entire plot within the first ten minutes and become immediately bored. This is a private game he always used to play, seeing how long it would take Sherlock to deduce the rest of a film plot. It turns out that V for Vendetta is easier to deduce than John had hoped, but it also turns out that Sherlock quite likes it, oddly. Of course: he probably identifies with Vee, John thinks, suppressing an internal sigh. They are sitting in the two small armchairs at the table, watching it on John’s laptop and when it ends, John gets up and stretches, announces that he’s going to get ready for bed. He changes into a t-shirt and pyjama bottoms in the bathroom, brushes his teeth, washes his face, and comes out to find that Sherlock has changed and is sitting on the edge of his (own) bed, waiting for the bathroom. Afterward, he switches off the lights except for the lamp on the table between the beds and comes to stand near it, looking down at John. 

He seems to be having difficulty choosing exactly which words to use. “It might be best,” he begins slowly, “if… given your… the events of last night…”

He trails off and John thinks that he is trying to apologise for the fact that he would prefer to sleep in his own bed. So they _are_ going to talk about it. John determines to be extremely casual. This is only what he expected, after all: that they would share a room but sleep in their own beds. Like always. 

Sherlock resumes, looking rather uncomfortable. “I have been thinking about this, and come to the realisation that you have been suffering from a traumatic experience. Again. And I observed that you did not appear to suffer any nightmares last night, after I… so perhaps it would be helpful if I were to join you again…?” 

Once again he trails off and looks terribly uncertain of himself, which is entirely extraordinary. John is flabbergasted. He wasn’t expecting this to be where Sherlock was going at all. “You want to sleep here again?” he asks, for clarification.

Sherlock’s hands move agitatedly. “Only if you think it would be helpful,” he says, as though anxious that John not get the wrong impression. 

John doesn’t really want Sherlock to sleep with him just because he feels sorry for him or is trying to offer his physical presence as a therapeutic device. “I’m sure I’ll be all right,” he says, mouth dry. Another part of his brain can’t believe he’s turning this down, but he wants it to be for the right reasons if Sherlock is going to offer to sleep beside him. Just to tamp down the point, he adds, “I’m sorry about last night. I’m not usually such a wreck. I’m sure it will be fine tonight.”

Sherlock’s lower lip rises to press into the upper, an expression which always makes him look like a stubborn child. “I think it would be better if I slept here. Unless you would rather not, of course.”

This appears to be tricky territory. John hesitates. Of _course_ he wants Sherlock to sleep with him, damn it, but he also doesn’t want to be mollycoddled or pitied. But he also doesn’t want to hurt Sherlock’s feelings. He does realise that this offer is being made as a great concession to Sherlock’s enormous need for privacy and personal space (his own disregard for others’ notwithstanding) and that Sherlock must be genuinely concerned about him. He doesn’t know what to say. “You’d be more comfortable in your own bed,” he tries, cautiously. 

Sherlock shakes his head. “That doesn’t matter,” he says impatiently. “You don’t need to be so stubborn about this, John. Unless you’d really rather sleep alone. I’m not entirely clear on your precise reasoning at the moment.”

John has the wit to realise that Sherlock is really set on this. “Okay, fine,” he says and gives in. He shifts over to his left to make space for Sherlock and pulls back the blankets, trying very hard not to make it look like a cheap seduction attempt. “You don’t have to sleep on top of the blankets tonight,” he adds, well aware of how awkward he sounds. 

Sherlock slides into bed with practised ease and no sense that this is in any way awkward for him, at any rate, and turns to face John. He places his right wrist in an obviously and deliberately reachable position between them and closes his eyes. 

John can still feel him staring through his closed eyelids and knows it will take him hours to fall asleep like this, his whole body tensed, feeling as awkward as he did the first time he ever spent the whole night with a girl. He closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again to find Sherlock staring at him. “That’s definitely going to make it hard to sleep if you stare at me all night.”

Sherlock blinks. “For me or for you?”

“Both, really.”

Sherlock doesn’t close his eyes, just continues to study John as though he is something slightly foreign and not wholly comprehensible. Then, “Good night, John.”

John suppresses the urge to sigh and closes his eyes again. “G’night.”

At least ten minutes pass before John’s body begins to relax. He can feel Sherlock silently observing, even if his eyes are closed. His ears and mind are open, his frightening acuity alert and ready to catch any tiny signal of information that John could give off. It must be exhausting to have such a busy brain, John thinks, not for the first time. He catches himself smiling to himself. Fine. He will give in. He knows Sherlock is waiting for it, anyway. He curls the fingers of his left hand around Sherlock’s wrist and falls asleep immediately. 

***

John wakes in the night to find himself half spread over Sherlock’s torso. Sherlock has turned onto his back in the night and evidently John followed, his left arm outstretched to pin Sherlock’s right wrist to the sheets. He is also awake because Sherlock’s breath is tickling his ear. Embarrassed, John eases himself off Sherlock’s chest and turns to face away, as he had the night before. Sherlock stirs a little, not waking, and turns back onto his side, shifting into the spaces behind John’s back and thighs and knees again, his right arm between his chest and John’s back. 

When John’s alarm goes off, they are in the same positions, except that Sherlock’s arm has worked its way around him, long fingers curled under John’s chin. John has a raging hard-on and he makes damned sure to keep his back to Sherlock’s prone form (one never knows) as he walks to the shower. Terrific. Wonderful. Just what he needed. 

***

He thinks that Sherlock sits a little closer to him on the train back to London but can’t quite be sure. Their legs are touching and Sherlock hasn’t moved away. John manages to keep his hands off Sherlock, but figures that if Sherlock isn’t going to move his leg, he’s not going to move his, either.

***

Back in London, Lestrade comes over and Sherlock discharges the majority of his deductions on the subject and tells Lestrade to bring Allan Gainsford in for questioning. Lestrade points out the difficulty of obtaining a government-sheltered mental patient for questioning in a murder investigation. Sherlock almost sneers and tells him to ask Mycroft to intercede. (Does Lestrade actually colour at this?) John is intrigued – was there actually something going on there? It doesn’t even bear imagining. _Lestrade_ , of all people – with _Mycroft Holmes_. It is a truly jaw-dropping theory. Tired, jovial, brusque-but-kind Greg Lestrade, always down for a pint and the latest football news (diehard Manchester United fan), and _Mycroft_? John frankly can’t imagine Mycroft being involved with any form of humanity, of any gender or age or background, unless possibly an exactly replica of himself to exchange clipped witticisms. That’s about as far as John’s imagination goes on that one. And yet, here is Lestrade, _blushing_ at Sherlock’s insinuation. (And how the hell had Sherlock known, anyway? Same way he knew anything, clearly. And Sherlock would say that he didn’t know, he saw. What had he seen that John missed this time?)

They are still talking about Allan Gainsford and the death of Alice Farrell, which Sherlock has (reluctantly) decided was at least mostly accidental. 

“‘Mostly’?” Lestrade repeats, sounding a touch frustrated. “What does _that_ mean, Sherlock?”

A slight head shake. “I’m not entirely certain,” Sherlock admits. “There’s something strange about it, the way it happened, but I won’t know until we talk to him.”

“We? You want to be part of the questioning, then?”

“If it’s not too inconvenient,” Sherlock says, with just a touch of emphasis, reminding Lestrade that he _is_ involved by invitation, after all. 

Lestrade sighs. “Yeah, all right. I’ll call you when we’ve got him down at the Yard.” He gets up and makes for the door, shoots John an embarrassed look, likely about Mycroft, and makes his way downstairs. 

John waits until the door is closed. “Did I hear what I think I just heard?”

Sherlock gets out of his armchair and goes to the desk, opening his laptop. No, John’s laptop. John bites his tongue; it is an old battle and one he will never win. “That depends on what you think you just heard.”

“About Mycroft,” John says pointedly. Sherlock is being deliberately dense. 

The light from the computer illuminates his face bluely, making his smile seem even more feral, eyes gleaming peculiarly. “Yes. You heard correctly.”

“How on earth did I miss that?” John asks blankly. “Oh, I know, don’t tell me – as ever, I see, but do not observe, et cetera. I know. What did I fail to observe this time?”

Sherlock’s smile grows slyly. “Actually, you didn’t. I hacked into one of Mycroft’s personal email accounts.”

This takes John a moment to register. “Mycroft _has_ personal email accounts?”

“Evidently.”

“And – you, what, found an email to Lestrade?”

An actual chuckle now. “An email to ‘Gregory’,” Sherlock corrects, still grinning at the screen. “Look.”

He turns the screen toward John, who belatedly realises that this was what Sherlock had been looking for from the moment Lestrade left the premises. He goes over and reads, feeling his own bewildered expression. If it were anyone other than Lestrade, he would be laughing his head off, he thinks, but… it’s Lestrade, their friend. There are allusions to _the other night_ and _when you told me_ and _never thought it would be possible_ and John feels like he has read someone’s diary without permission. He almost feels guilty… but then, it’s Mycroft. He glances at Sherlock, torn between his desire to laugh at Mycroft’s efforts at wooing and his painful desire to honour Lestrade’s privacy. 

“I know,” Sherlock says apologetically, turning the laptop back. “I shouldn’t. We shouldn’t. But it’s _Mycroft_. I therefore should. It took me a bit longer to realise who he was writing to, but once I suspected, I didn’t hack any further than this message.”

“And when did you realise – ?” John sees that his hand is on Sherlock’s shoulder and quickly removes it. 

“Only just now, when I got him to confirm it,” Sherlock says, still looking pleased with himself. “I did suspect, though. Lestrade’s been acting differently. And his last wife moved out just before I… she moved out a few months ago. I just had a feeling.”

“I – _cannot_ imagine the two of them together,” John says emphatically. 

Sherlock agrees. “Disturbing notion. Hardly bears thinking about.” He looks at the clock. “Dinner?”

“Takeout?”

“Perfect. You call. I’ll go get a bottle of wine.”

John agrees, and this time he feels happy without having to prompt it, to remind himself of it. 

And later, pleasantly full and drowsy from the wine, John half expects it when Sherlock silently follows him up the stairs. He looks at John questioningly from the far side of the bed and waits. John makes a gesture sort of like a shrug and gets into bed. Sherlock doesn’t say anything either, just quietly joins him, turns so that his wrist is available again should John want it, and appears to go to sleep within minutes. John watches him, and when he is sure that Sherlock is sleeping, softly lays the backs of two fingers against that slender, sinewy wrist and counts beats until he falls asleep. 

***

It becomes a habit. Their daily life is unchanged. They never talk about it. They go to the Yard, John works a day or two at the surgery, he makes Sherlock buy groceries (a rare event, and although Sherlock buys a few wrong things and spends far too much on the produce, he also successfully deduces the locations of most of the items on John’s list), and life carries on. It takes Lestrade longer than anticipated to get the red tape around Gainsford loosened so that he can be questioned outside the presence of a barrister, but they finally have an answer as to when they can expect to have the man delivered to London for questioning: next Thursday.

Meanwhile, Sherlock continues to follow John up to bed. They sleep together. Only sleep. John wakes up hard every morning, as though he is in his early twenties again. He can never quite manage to find out whether Sherlock reacts similarly to waking up beside him, but then decides he doesn’t want to know, in case Sherlock isn’t. Nothing happens between them, except that Sherlock always goes to sleep not touching John and yet John unfailingly wakes with a heavy arm draped over his torso or chest. Just an arm. Never anything more. Sherlock seems to do it unconsciously, in his sleep, but has made no other moves toward him. He is clearly doing what he thinks is his duty as a friend to make John feel more secure, or to keep him from having nightmares related to Sherlock, or something along those lines. Who can ever know, with Sherlock? And maybe, John thinks, maybe Sherlock likes it, the intimacy of sleeping with someone else. Has he ever shared a bed with another person before? John wishes he could ask, but somehow he can’t bring himself to talk about it. The last think he wants to do is spook Sherlock. He doesn’t like to think how much he has come to depend on Sherlock’s presence in his bed every night, even if it’s only that. Someone to fall asleep beside. Even if he wants much more, this is still considerably more than he ever thought he’d get from Sherlock and beggars can’t be choosers, after all. He wants to know what would happen if he deliberately mimicked Sherlock’s gesture, or turned to face him in the night, put his arm around him. He considers himself a moderately brave man, but this is different. With Sherlock, there is no standard to fall back on, no precedent set. He doesn’t want to scare him off. Besides: it’s quite nice just waking up next to Sherlock. Even if it would be nicer still be able to wake up and turn into that heavy, unconscious embrace, make it a conscious one, feel that full-lipped mouth in all its mercurial expressions on his… but this is schoolboy fantasy and John knows it. He’ll take what he can get. 

***

It is Tuesday before dinner with Harry can happen; she was out of town on the weekend. She is single at the moment and John hopes she won’t be too prickly. Having a girlfriend tends to ensure that she will be on her best behaviour, at least at the beginning, and Sherlock brings out the worst in her. John thinks about this while they are in the cab and reflects that this is one of the reasons he likes Sherlock. Besides, he never feels badly about subjecting Sherlock to her; they see far less of Harry than they do of Mycroft, after all. He comes to himself and finds his hand on Sherlock’s knee again and removes it, sighing to himself. 

Harry is already there, sitting by herself at a table for three and checking something on her phone. She’s had her hair cut almost as short as John’s, and it suits her. He hasn’t seen her with hair this short since her teens. 

“Yes,” Sherlock says, as though reading his thoughts, as they walk toward her table. “New tattoo, too.”

“How on earth do you know _that_?” It must be the six thousandth time he’s asked this question, but he never does tire of hearing the reasons. 

“Shoulder twitch. It itches, and she’s very aware of its presence. I’m going to say anarchy symbol.” Sherlock unbuttons his coat and brings out his public smile, the nice one, says Harry’s name and bends to kiss her left cheek. Harry permits this, not returning the gesture.

John follows and gives her a clumsy hug. “Hi, Harry.”

She returns the hug loosely. “Hey. How are you?” Her eyes move to Sherlock. “Both of you, that is.”

Sherlock looks at John, ceding the right to answer to him. “We’re good,” John says. “New case on, triple homicide.”

She lifts her eyebrows sceptically. She never did think much of John’s abilities as a detective, always assumed that Sherlock just let John tag along or something. She doesn’t say anything like this now, though. “Triple homicide? Where?”

“Surrey,” John replies. “Ongoing investigation, still tracking down leads. How are you?”

Harry shrugs elaborately, bony shoulders nearly touching her ears. “Oh, fine. Same old thing. I got a promotion.”

“Well done!” John says. “To what?”

“Accounts manager,” Harry says, still looking bored but under that, slightly pleased. 

“Congratulations,” Sherlock says, sipping his water. “Will that mean more work for you?”

Her eyes focus on him. “Less, actually. I get to designate more of it away.”

Sherlock makes polite noises and John almost can’t take it. He opens his menu and begins perusing. As Harry chose the restaurant, it will be mostly vegan cuisine, which he has learned to tolerate over the years. He scans the options and chooses the most meat-like thing he can find, a chilli of some sort. It will indubitably come with some manner of crumbly bread made from a plant he has never heard of and he will be hungry again in an hour, but he knows that Harry will always call the shots when they dine together. It’s like she deliberately baits him, and Sherlock even more so. 

They order and Harry asks about John’s current surgery. Sherlock follows up about the promotion and asks if the annoying supervisor is still in existence. He is, and Harry talks about his shortcomings for awhile. After a bit, John asks about her dating life. 

“What about it?” Harry asks, pushing at a piece of red pepper with her chopsticks. 

John backs off quickly. “Just wondered if you were seeing anyone new these days.”

“No.” Harry narrows her eyes. “You?” The eyes flick (pointedly, John thinks) to Sherlock. 

“Er, no,” John says, thinking of Sherlock’s nightly presence in his bed. 

Harry’s eyes are still on Sherlock. She opens her mouth and he interrupts, quickly. “You’ve got a new tattoo,” he observes. John can hear the slight tension in his voice and wonders if Harry can detect it, too. 

She stops. “How did you know?”

He forces a smile. “Left shoulder?”

She doesn’t return the smile. “How did you know?” she repeats. 

“I observed. What is it?”

John silently wills him not to speak his guess. Harry stares at him, apparently considering potential responses. Finally she says, grudgingly, “It’s an anarchy symbol.”

“Ah.” Sherlock hides the fact that he knew/deduced it/has x-ray vision perfectly. “How recent?”

“Three days,” Harry responds. “Got it in Swansea on the weekend. I was there for work.”

“Yes, of course,” Sherlock says smoothly. “John said.”

Harry is not deterred, however. “What about you?” she asks, emphasising it just enough to make it clear that Sherlock interrupted her initial attempt to ask. “Seeing anyone these days?”

Sherlock’s mouth tightens a little in mostly-disguised annoyance. “I don’t date.”

Harry puts her chopsticks down. “Bullshit.”

“Harry,” John says warningly. 

She ignores him. “What about that woman?”

Woman? John looks at Sherlock, who doesn’t seem to know, either. “Which woman?” Sherlock asks slowly. 

“You know which woman. The one you tormented John with for months. The one who died and then wasn’t dead – sound familiar?” Harry’s eyes are narrow again. “Sounds like you two have a lot in common.”

John interjects. “First off, I wasn’t tormented, thank you.” (This is a lie and he knows it, but Sherlock doesn’t need to know this, and neither does Harry. How had she worked that out, anyway?) “Second, I know you know this now, because Mycroft told me he told you. She’s dead. Really and truly dead this time.”

Sherlock clears his throat. “She isn’t, actually.”

John’s head turns so quickly his neck hurts. “What?”

“She’s not dead.” He moves his serviette from his lap to the table. 

John feels like a cold wave has just washed over him. “She is,” he insists, though the conviction is leaking away, like warmth from a corpse. “Mycroft told me. She was executed in Karachi.”

“I know he told you that. That’s what he believed, at the time.” Sherlock looks anything but sure of himself. “Perhaps I should have told you, but it didn’t seem important at the time.”

“Didn’t seem – ” John has almost forgotten Harry’s presence. “At what time? When? How do you know she’s alive, and when did you find out?”

Sherlock seems to be determined to look anywhere but at him. “I know she’s alive because I prevented her execution,” he says, speaking to his water glass. “I have a contact in Pakistan and he let me know that she had been captured and was asking for me. I flew to Karachi, disguised myself as one of the executioners, and helped her to affect her escape. That’s all.”

John’s mouth is open in disbelief. “You flew to Karachi and kept her from being executed?”

“That’s what I just said, yes.”

“And you didn’t think that was important enough to tell me?” He can hear the outrage rising in his voice. 

Sherlock looks at him. “No,” he says, beginning to sound a bit strained, but also as though he is trying to underline a point. “That’s precisely why I didn’t tell you. It literally slipped my mind. I know you were so determined to think that I was interested in her. I wasn’t. She was interesting from a deductive perspective and I didn’t want her to be beheaded, but there is a good deal of ground between that and whatever the two of you insist on thinking about it. I haven’t seen or heard from her since. End of not-very-interesting story.”

John is still stuck, though. “But you went to Pakistan and didn’t tell me about it?”

Sherlock’s voice goes just a touch acidic. “You were on a skiing weekend in the Alps with whatever that woman’s name was. The nurse from the clinic in Islington.”

“Hannah.”

“Yes.”

John feels chastened. He is getting jealous over an act of mercy, performed while he was on a romantic – if short-lived – week-end with a woman he most certainly had slept with, and _not_ in the just sleeping in a bed together sort of way. If anyone should be jealous here, it’s Sherlock. And besides, it would hardly have been the first time that Sherlock had gone somewhere for a few days and not told him. (John thinks of Minsk. He’d thought Sherlock was just unusually occupied with a case that weekend, and he’d been working overtime and hardly noticed.) Except by the time Irene Adler had been around, he’d known how he felt, known how enormously jealous he’d been of her, even while feeling fiercely protective of Sherlock’s heart. “I see,” is all he can think of to say. It sounds lame, even to him. 

Harry swirls the water around in her glass. “Interesting,” she says coolly. “So this is the woman you’re claiming you _weren’t_ tormented by, is it?”

Heat rises to his face. “Lay off, Harry,” he says irritably. 

The server comes by and takes their plates, including Sherlock’s almost untouched whatever-it-was that he’d ordered. 

Harry mercifully changes the topic then, goes back to her new tattoo and starts talking to Sherlock about it. Something seems more relaxed about her now; somehow she isn’t as withdrawn and snappish to Sherlock any more. John cannot fathom why. Sherlock, unsurprisingly, knows all about the anarchy movement in Britain and asks the sorts of questions about Harry’s interest in it that spark her interest and get her talking. She seems impressed with his knowledge and they chat for the next ten minutes or so. When the bill comes, Sherlock surreptitiously pays for all three of them, which neither John nor Harry say anything about. John is used to it and knows that Sherlock wouldn’t let him pay, anyway, and Harry probably resents it in some way but is being decent enough not to say so. When they leave, Sherlock hails a taxi and insists that Harry take it, kissing her on the cheek again. She actually hugs him. John feels like he’s missed a step somewhere. 

He’s still thinking about it when a second taxi slows at Sherlock’s raised arm. Inside, they are both quiet. John still feels grouchy about the whole subject of Irene Adler and Sherlock isn’t talking, so he has no idea what he’s thinking. The quiet lasts all the way home. John wonders if Sherlock will still want to sleep with him that night, but his doubts are allayed when Sherlock follows him resolutely upstairs. This time, though, he goes to sleep with his back to John. John sleeps facing away, too, feeling like everything is wrong and that he doesn’t know how to fix it. But in the morning, he wakes with Sherlock’s arm around him, long fingers resting against John’s wrist. 

***

Lestrade texts not long after that. John has been dozing but wakes again at the sound of Sherlock’s phone. Sherlock rolls over and unplugs it from the charger, picking it up to read the message. 

“Are you awake?” he asks. “It’s Lestrade.”

John turns onto his back and yawns. “What did he say?”

Sherlock pushes himself into a sitting position and hands John the phone. “Change in plans. They’re getting Gainsford in today at one o’clock.”

The text also says that Sherlock is welcome to come along for the questioning, and also that Gainsford will be attended by a counsellor. Not a lawyer, a psychologist. “And he’s coming with a counsellor.”

“Apparently, yes. You’re coming, right?”

“Of course, if you want me to.”

“I want you to.” Sherlock is in awake-mode now. He takes his phone back and gets out of bed, going downstairs without another word, probably to shower. 

John feels strangely alone after he goes. It could have been nice, just chatting in bed a little before the day got started, but he supposes this is only therapeutic sleeping together, after all. He sighs and gets up, puts on his dressing gown and goes downstairs to see about breakfast, since Sherlock will be in the shower. 

At the Yard, everyone is tense. Lestrade meets them and takes them to the interrogation room. “I’m not about to tell you what to say or not say to someone who might be mentally ill,” he says, “but… just bear that in mind, all right?”

“Of course.” Sherlock brushes this off at once. 

Lestrade’s eyes meet John’s with a touch of concern and John gives his best don’t-worry-about-it look. “The counsellor will be there,” he reminds Lestrade. “And so will you. Are we ready?” He looks at Sherlock. 

“Yes.” Sherlock’s coat sweeps around him as he turns and John follows it into the interrogation room. 

Allan Gainsford is seated behind the table with the counsellor. The counsellor is in his sixties and had a wise, grandfatherly look that John knows immediately has been carefully cultivated. Gainsford is in his mid-twenties and is fidgeting agitatedly, as badly as Sherlock in case/nicotine withdrawal. 

Sherlock pulls out a chair and sits down across from him. John glances at Lestrade, who goes to lean against the back wall to watch. He isn’t sure if he should stand by Lestrade or what, but Sherlock looks at him and nods with his chin to the chair beside him. John sits, and Sherlock begins. 

“I’m Sherlock Holmes,” he says without preamble, speaking only to Gainsford. “This is Dr John Watson. Need to ask a few questions.”

Gainsford looks nervous. “Okay.”

Sherlock starts off easily enough, speaking with that relaxed, easy confidence he uses when leading up to the main event. He leads Gainsford through some personal history, confirms his incarceration in a hospital in Kent, and discusses the government work programme in which he takes part. Gainsford answers slowly (John can feel Sherlock silently twitching in impatience, but as yet he hasn’t said anything out loud) but regularly, occasionally glancing at the counsellor. After these preliminaries, Sherlock blinks and abruptly switches tacks. “Tell me about Alice Farrell.”

Gainsford’s eyes widen as though in horror. His mouth opens and he looks at the counsellor in panic.

“It’s all right, Allan,” the counsellor reassures him. “You can talk about it. You’ve been able to talk about it before. No one is blaming you.”

Well, the jury might be out on that one, John thinks. Sherlock is still, focused. Waiting. 

Gainsford takes a deep breath. He looks nervous, but suddenly John doesn’t quite buy it. There’s more going on here than a simple case of nerves. “I – I was at school with Alice,” he says, picking up a pen that is lying on the table in front of him and twisting it between his fingers. “She was my friend.”

“Go on,” Sherlock says, eyes boring into him. 

“She was beautiful,” Gainsford says, sounding broken.

“You liked her,” Sherlock states. 

“Everybody liked Alice.”

“I rather think you liked her more than most people, at least to a point.” Sherlock lets a small pause go by, during which Gainsford doesn’t say anything. “Did you kill her?”

Gainsford’s eyes fly open. “No! I swear! I didn’t! I wouldn’t have!”

The counsellor is glaring at Sherlock reproachfully. “Really, Mr Holmes, I – ”

“Please let Mr Holmes continue,” Lestrade interrupts from behind them. 

“Thank you,” Sherlock says coolly. “What happened that day, by the barn?” Another pause. Sherlock goes on, impatient. “Oh come, we know you were there. What happened, in this… accident?”

Gainsford has begun to weep, but John still thinks it isn’t entirely genuine. “I – I don’t know, I don’t remember…”

“Yes, you do,” Sherlock contradicts. “If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that you remember very clearly. The events might have become distorted through your trauma, but I am entirely certain that you remember. So: you went to the house. She wasn’t there. Perhaps no one was home, or perhaps someone told you she was swimming. You went to find her. Why? Oh, I don’t know, perhaps it was your big moment. You were going to tell her how you felt or ask her out or something. What happened?”

Gainsford goes quiet, the tears stopping. “She was swimming,” he says, his voice going vague. “In the pond behind the barn. She liked to swim.”

“Did you spy on her?”

“She didn’t see me.”

“Did you take her clothes?”

Gainsford glances up, just a fleeting look, but John catches something highly calculating there. Then the face drops again and the anguish is back. “It was just a joke,” he moans. “She didn’t have anything on. I just wanted to see her, wanted to make her wonder what happened.”

Sherlock glances at John. “How did _that_ go?” John asks dryly. “I’ll be she was thrilled, having some pervert from school spying on her swimming in the buff and then taking her clothes. Is that when you decided to ask her out, then?”

Gainsford’s face flushes in anger. “Waited until she got out, but she didn’t see me. I was hiding. Watching her. She went to the barn.”

“And what happened?” Sherlock leans forward slightly, pressing. 

Gainsford says nothing, studying the pen. He begins to twist the top part off the bottom. The counsellor is looking at him strangely, as though seeing something he hasn’t observed before. “Go on, Allan,” he says again, in a different tone than before. 

Again, that quick, hardly perceptible look. He does not look traumatised to John, though insane or at least wildly unstable is a definite possibility. “She saw me,” he says, voice going breathy. “She was startled. Almost dropped her towel.”

“Which was, I assume, your point,” Sherlock says, his lip twisting. “Moving ahead: you startled her, and what then?”

“Asked her if she wanted to go to the dance with me.” A flash of anger. “She said no. We had an argument. She wanted to know if I knew where her clothes were. She went into the barn because her pa’s coat was there and she was going to put it on and go look for her clothes. But she – ” Gainsford stops. The fingers still. 

John has got the gist of it. “You chased her,” he said flatly. “She said no and you pushed it. She was startled and vulnerable because you stole her clothing, so of course she said no. And then she went to find something to put on and you went after her. And in her panic, she ran into the mess of baler twine, got stuck, maybe flailed around in her panic and just made it worse, and that was that.”

“It was an accident,” Gainsford repeats, a strange light in his eyes that John doesn’t understand. “It wasn’t my fault.”

Sherlock looks at John. “What did you do with her clothes? The towel?” he asks Gainsford. 

“Buried them,” Gainsford says, a sly sideways look at the counsellor, who is looking very concerned. 

Sherlock appears to make up his mind. “All right. Let’s call it an accident,” he says. “Lestrade. The photos.” He holds up a hand for them at his shoulder, and Lestrade comes forward and places a sheaf of eight-by-ten colour photographs in Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock spreads them out on the table, four of them, facing Allan and the counsellor. “Tell me about these four.”

The counsellor looks visibly alarmed now. “Allan,” he says, but can’t seem to decide what to say after that. 

Gainsford’s eyes gleam in a way that remind John of Moriarty. (Bad thought, cancel, cancel, cancel.) “Pretty girls,” he says, and looks away. 

“Look at them.” Sherlock is commanding, his eyes intense. Gainsford doesn’t budge. Sherlock’s lips compress in a flash of anger. “Look at them!”

Gainsford glances down, seemingly indifferent. “What about them?”

“Where did you find them?”

John is expecting a flat-out denial that Gainsford ever even knew the girls, but Gainsford shrugs. “Here and there.”

Behind them, Lestrade sighs. 

Sherlock hasn’t moved an inch. “You attacked them. Stripped them and hanged them. Why?”

Gainsford shrugs and refuses to answer, still making no denials. 

Sherlock’s voice is steady, quiet. “They look a bit like her. Don’t they.”

Suddenly Gainsford’s face is full of rage. “Killed them,” he snarls. “They looked like Alice. So I thought they could die like Alice.” He starts to laugh hysterically, and suddenly his fingers are twisting impossibly quickly, destroying the pen, deep blue ink all over his fingers and the table. He laughs and laughs and laughs and it makes John feel ill. 

The counsellor looks shaken. “Gentlemen,” he says, addressing mostly Sherlock and Lestrade, “Please allow me to state that I had no idea that these… events had taken place. Please also be advised that my patient is a very troubled individual, far more so than I had realised. I was aware of the death of Alice Farrell, but nothing beyond that… I knew that he had witnessed it, but… and these others, afterward…”

“It’s not your fault, doctor,” Lestrade says, coming forward. He snaps his fingers and two officers come out from the adjoining chamber with handcuffs in hand. 

“Wait,” Sherlock says. “Lestrade. The others.” Everything halts. Sherlock withdraws the photos of the three latest victims and puts them on the table. “Talk about these ones,” he orders, a long finger pinning the first photo to the table. 

Lestrade signals at the officers, who thump Gainsford back into his chair. Gainsford stares at the pictures wordlessly. 

“Talk,” Sherlock repeats, steel in his tone. 

Gainsford is still staring at the pictures. 

John decides to prompt him. “Where did you find them? And why three this time?”

The new pictures seemed to have rendered Gainsford speechless. John looks at the counsellor, who clears his throat. “Allan was confined for several years after the death of Ms Farrell,” he says.

“Seven years, I think,” Sherlock says. 

“Erm. Yes, in fact. He was deemed fit to re-enter society six months ago. I have been his regular counsellor since three years into his confinement and have continued to meet with him. I honestly don’t understand; we all thought he was ready…” The counsellor trails off. 

“Could something have happened to trigger his original memory of the traumatic incident of Alice Farrell’s death?” John asks him. 

“I suppose that must be what happened,” the counsellor agrees. “Allan? Do you want to say anything?”

Allan smears his ink-covered palms over the surface of the table. “No.”

Lestrade speaks up. “They all had identification on them that we discovered was fake. I’ve just had an idea.”

John is blank, but Sherlock gets it at once. “They were all called Alice. Weren’t they?” he says to Gainsford. 

The revelation has another startling effect on Gainsford: he suddenly begins to cry, this time for real. His hands go to his forehead, his cheeks, fingers leaving navy streaks over his face and eyelids and the effect is gruesome. Though he is more disgusted than anything else – after all, the man killed one woman accidentally and seven others deliberately – John also feels a pang of comprehension. Almost compassion. 

Sherlock looks at him just as he is thinking this, and John wonders if his thoughts are showing on his face. 

They spend the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening at the Yard with Lestrade and his young assistant, Lucy. Lucy orders in Chinese at some point, and around nine, they leave, Lestrade assuring them that he’ll keep them up to date with any developments. 

In the taxi, Sherlock says quietly, “As I said. Love and grief. Powerful motivators.”

Something about this doesn’t sit right for John. “You would know about that, would you?” he asks, looking toward the window. 

He can feel Sherlock go still to his left. “What?”

“You’ve loved and grieved, then?”

Peripherally he sees Sherlock making some sort of motion with his hands. “I fail to see how my personal experience of these emotions prevents or enables me to comprehend their application to an individual’s motive in committing a crime.”

John sighs. “Fine. Never mind.”

A small silence forms in the taxi between them. When Sherlock speaks again, it’s quiet. “You clearly have something on your mind.”

John clenches his jaw, the small, sensible part of his mind sending up a warning not to talk. The rest of his brain ignores it. “You grieved Irene Adler, when you thought she was dead. I know you did.”

He can almost feel the tang of anger in the air: Sherlock’s anger. “Are we talking about that again?”

John glares at him now, turning his accusing look on him. “How can you say it didn’t matter? Do you honestly expect me to swallow that?”

Sherlock’s lips compress. “You don’t normally choose to believe that I’m lying to you,” he says, words tight. 

He’s hurt, John understands, but he can’t let this go. “You loved her,” he says, stubborn. 

“No.” 

It is a single word and he wants to believe it, but... “You did grieve,” John insists. “I saw you.”

“And I heard you. At Battersea Station.” They have never talked about this before, about Sherlock having overheard John’s exchange with Irene. “You thought I was heartbroken.”

“You were acting heartbroken,” John retorts. “All the sad music. Not talking. Not eating.”

“I was acting the way I act in the middle of an unsolved problem,” Sherlock says tersely, now looking at the window controls on the door on his side. He touches them with a gloved finger. “I hate riddles and you know it. I didn’t like thinking that she’d died having bested me, or that she’d successfully made me think she was dead. I’ve already acknowledged that I found her interesting and that I didn’t want her to die. I don’t understand why you insist on believing it was more than that.”

The taxi pulls up in front of 221B and they get out, Sherlock throwing bills over the seat without looking at them. John unlocks the door and goes upstairs slowly, not really wanting to continue the argument but needing resolution. “I’ve just never seen you act like that before,” he says, almost ashamed that he’s still dragging this out. Hadn’t he told himself, way back then, that he was going to be nice about all that?

“ _John_.” Sherlock sounds annoyed and he hasn’t taken his coat or gloves off yet. They are standing just inside the flat. John closes the door behind himself and waits for Sherlock to keep talking, wanting a proper explanation. A real explanation. “Can you hear yourself? You say you’d never seen me act that way, but you were _there_ to see it, to know what my habitual behaviour is in the first place. If Mycroft were here, he would say that he’d never seen me behave _that_ way: deliberately allowing someone to be around to observe my behaviour on an ongoing basis. Can you really not see that one of these things is vastly more… significant than the other, if you’re determined to look for significance?”

Somehow this doesn’t reassure him. “But I’m not the one you play sad music for,” John says, aware of how childish it sounds. “I’m just the everyday, the one you just count on to be there when there’s no one more interesting.”

Sherlock’s mouth tightens again. “You don’t know what I play or don’t play when you’re not there to hear it. You don’t know how I behaved or felt when I was away those three years,” he says. “And I repeat, can you not hear yourself? Can you not hear how jealous you sound?”

John’s face begins to burn. “I am not jealous!”

“You are.” Sherlock states this as though it is fact. “You always were. It’s obvious, John, even if you can’t see it or refuse to acknowledge it.” John tries to interrupt but Sherlock just cuts through him, relentless. “I know you think I’m incredibly naïve about sentiment in general, but the truth is that you’re the one behaving as though ignorant of his own feelings. They’re quite plain to see, ‘even’ to me. What I don’t understand is whether you’re simply in denial or just don’t have the courage to do something about them.”

John feels his mouth open, anger and humiliation flooding into his face and throat. “I – ”

The corners of Sherlock’s mouth pull inward, frowning. “And you’re about to deny it. I see.”

“It’s not – I’m not – ” John is spluttering. 

“You touch me all the time,” Sherlock says in heavy patience, almost exasperation. “Or at least you do until you notice yourself doing it. Did you think I hadn’t noticed? Me?” 

John feels as though he is drowning. This has all gone to hell faster than he could have imagined. He wishes to God he’d kept his bloody mouth shut about Irene. 

Sherlock studies him, his face a mixture of anger and a touch of contempt. “After I started sleeping in your bed, I wondered if that, at least, would prompt you to act on your feelings, but evidently you would prefer to cling to some misguided belief in my imagined feelings for a woman I haven’t seen in over three years and have made no effort to contact since, despite my having spent the bulk of that time doing everything in my power to preserve your life, my life, and _this_ life, this everyday life that we share. If that’s the version of reality you prefer to believe, then I am at a loss as to how to better reassure you.” At this, Sherlock turns, still wearing his coat and shoes, and goes into his room, closing the door firmly behind him. 

John stands where he is for several minutes, stock still. He feels as though he has just been punched in the chest. Sherlock has never turned his back on him and walked away like that before. He has really gone too far. Belated, agonised remorse washes over him. He looks toward the short corridor leading to Sherlock’s bedroom and wonders if he should go and knock, wonders what he should say. The indecision grips him. He can feel the negative, leave-me-alone vibes radiating from Sherlock’s closed door as clearly as though he can see them. After a little, he makes himself move and goes numbly upstairs. 

***

Ten o’clock comes and goes, then eleven, then midnight. John lies awake on his back, unable to sleep, unable to decide where exactly he went so spectacularly wrong, and what to do about it now. Is Sherlock sleeping, in the room below? That’s almost the worst part. He wishes they could just pretend the fight hadn’t happened, that all the wrong words hadn’t been said aloud, just go to sleep together like always. Talk about it in the morning over tea and toast, or maybe by the morning, it would have magically vanished somehow. He drags through all the words again. He can see now that the argument over Irene was just the channel for all the rest of the unresolved anger that he’s been trying to push away and ignore for the past four months, evidently without much success, given that the anger and his need to touch Sherlock both for reassurance and plain attraction have increased, not decreased. The truth is that he never fully realised the reason why Sherlock had left after his so-called death. He’d understood well enough why Sherlock had had to go through with the fake suicide, and although Sherlock had explained where he’d been, John had never quite been able to accept the fact that Sherlock hadn’t told him, had left him out of it. But now… he realises that Sherlock had been off fighting a battle that John couldn’t be part of, because John was one of the things he was fighting for. For John, and for _them_. And while John had grieved, some part of Sherlock had surely grieved, too, even if John hadn’t been there to bear witness to it. Sherlock’s stung words about John not knowing what music he had or had not played while John wasn’t there to hear it, or how he’d felt while he’d been away hit him hard. He’d honestly never heard Sherlock say so much at once on the subject of his own personal feelings about anything, and what he’d said about John’s very presence in his daily life being atypical… he supposed he’d never quite realised how exceptional he really must have been, then. Because, as he so often reminded himself, Sherlock had come back to him. It had taken three years, but now Sherlock was _here_ , they were together in their own way, living at Baker Street again, solving crimes together again, and John was hung up on something that was apparently ancient history to Sherlock. So what if he keeps Irene’s old phone in his drawer of files, when he keeps John in his very life? 

John feels worse than ever. And that jab, about John touching him all the time (true) and not acting on his feelings with Sherlock there in his bed every night – that wasn’t exactly fair, though he gets it now. He’d thought it was just pity and guilt, guilt over having caused John this trauma. He’d never said anything about any trauma he might have felt, being away so long, going it alone again after having become accustomed to having a partner at his side. Was it an invitation, though, or merely a cut at John’s horridly obvious feelings? 

Suddenly he knows. Suddenly it has all become clear. John sits up in bed, realisation hitting like a wave. Sherlock never would have said aloud if there was any chance he might have gone along with it, with John making a move. Never would have got so hurt if there hadn’t been something there _to_ hurt. Sherlock was hurt because he thought John doubted the strength of his feelings for him, whatever they were, exactly. It can’t wait until morning. He needs to talk to Sherlock _now_. He pushes the blankets back and goes downstairs, listens at Sherlock’s door and hears nothing. He is always such a quiet sleeper. Just warm limbs and soft breathing. He opens the door a little. 

Sherlock hears it in his sleep and stirs, lifts his head and sees John. For a moment they just look at each other. “Nightmare?” Sherlock asks, his voice thick with sleep. 

He’s either forgotten the fight or his concern for John overrides it. John feels his heart clench at this thought. “No,” he says. “Er, can I come in?”

Sherlock hesitates, thinking, then nods, shifts away from the edge of the bed so that John can sit down (or lie down? John can’t be sure). 

John goes over and sits, looking at Sherlock’s face. Sherlock’s cheekbones look nearly skeletal in the streetlight slanting in (he never closes his curtains), his eyes awake and wary now, watching John a bit the way prey watches the predator. John bites the inside of his cheek when he notices this. He doesn’t know how to start. “I’m sorry,” he says. “God, I’m so sorry, Sherlock.”

Sherlock waits, seeming either not entirely certain what he wants to say, or waiting for John to say more. His long-fingered hands rest on top of the blankets, twisting an edge between two fingertips. 

“I’m an idiot,” John says, letting all of his breath out at once. “I’ve been so caught up in – in small things that I’ve completely missed the big picture. And either way, it doesn’t matter. All that matters to me is that you’re here again.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sherlock says, voice still rough with sleep, but his eyes are focused. 

John puts his right hand on Sherlock’s left wrist. “I believe you.”

“You were still angry, about the Fall.” John can hear him capitalising it, the way he does in his head. “That’s what all this was really about, the jealousy. It was really that you thought I was going to leave you again,” Sherlock says, eyes silver in the streetlight. “You were worried I was going to move to Sussex without you.”

He can’t deny it. “At first, yeah,” John admits. “When you brought it up that day, out in Surrey.”

“I thought you would know that I meant with you.” 

John’s throat tightens. This is completely surprising. He clears his throat, trying to push the lump down. “I… I didn’t. Realise, I mean. I’m sorry.”

“Do you think you would want to, one day?” Sherlock asks, slightly awkwardly. Uncertain. 

John looks at him for a long time, just thinking, and noticing how damned beautiful Sherlock is in this midnight-and-ivory cast from the streetlight, making the angles of his cheekbones and upper lip sharper while the lower lip and chin are more rounded, eyes almost piercingly light. “If you’re totally sure you’ll want me around for that long.”

“One hundred percent,” Sherlock says instantly, his eyes locked on John’s face. His wrist turns in John’s hand, fingertips grazing John’s wrist. 

John looks at their hands. He is sitting on Sherlock’s bed and they are almost holding hands. Has Sherlock just asked if they can spend the rest of their lives together? At least living together? Planning on retiring together? Surely even Sherlock knows the exclusivity that implies, and… perhaps more. Perhaps it really will be okay to say it, finally. “I’d like that, yeah,” he says. And then adds, softer, “I was never in denial, you know. I just never thought you would – ”

“Idiot,” Sherlock says, eyes sparking. 

John smiles at this, hesitates slightly, then seizes all of his courage in both hands, leans down and puts his mouth on Sherlock’s. Just lips on lips, and Sherlock’s are warm and soft and magnetic. Sherlock doesn’t pull away, recoiling in horror, doesn’t say that he considers him just a work partner, that this domestic arrangement is just for convenience and now friendship, too. On the contrary – the hand that isn’t being held in John’s comes up to the back of his neck and draws him down, closer. Sherlock’s lips part before John’s do, drawing him in, tongues touching tentatively. They kiss and kiss and John feels like he’s drowning again, only in the best of ways this time. Sherlock’s very proximity is dizzying, his pulse quick and firm under his fingers and he can feel it through his rib cage where it’s leaning against Sherlock’s torso. Sherlock’s hand moves from the back of his neck to his face and John knows that he has never loved this hard before and never will again. He is momentarily so overwhelmed by emotion that he needs to pull away, just catch his breath for a moment.

Their faces are inches apart, both of them breathing heavily, and Sherlock’s face – when has he seen a look like that on it before? “John,” Sherlock says hoarsely. “I – ” He stops. 

John lets go of his wrist and touches Sherlock’s cheek with his thumb, lets his fingertips settle along Sherlock’s jaw line. “Yeah?”

“You know you were always the only one that I – you _must_ know that.” Sherlock’s eyes are moving back and forth slightly, searching John’s eyes and face. His voice is tight, face anxious. 

John returns the look, daring to look further and longer than he ever had before. “I think I do, now.”

Sherlock looks as though he’s about to kiss John again, then changes his mind. “Get up for a moment.”

Confused, John stands up and Sherlock pulls back the covers on the other side of the bed, the side that John normally sleeps on. “Come over here.”

Oh. Yes, this works. Both relieved and happy, John goes to the other side of the bed, gets into it and shifts over. He moves over to Sherlock and puts an arm over his chest, revelling in finally being allowed to do it officially. It feels natural, like they belong together. They do belong together. He’s known this for a long time, but didn’t realise that Sherlock knew it, too. A long finger curls under his chin and pulls it up. John smiles up at Sherlock and slides up to kiss him again. Sherlock seems more sure of himself now, tongue snaking into John’s mouth, his lips strong and assured. This is headier than wine and John lets himself fall into it, pushing up onto an elbow to bend over Sherlock. Sherlock winds a long leg around John’s in silent encouragement and John’s level of arousal goes from relaxed to pressing in a heartbeat. The tempo changes between them, breath heavier, every touch harder. They break apart for an instant. “Why did we never do this before?” John demands. 

Sherlock tries to shrug. “You would touch me unconsciously, but snatch your hands away the instant you realised you were doing it. I couldn’t have responded, not with you still behaving like that about it. I couldn’t tell if you really wanted it or not. I didn’t have a real chance to respond. And besides, I _did_ respond. I thought I was encouraging it, but you never responded to my initiatives, either.”

John shakes his head, though this makes perfect, belated sense. “I thought it was pity,” he says, feeling sheepish. “I thought you were just letting me, trying to reassure me or comfort me or something.”

“No.”

It’s a single syllable, but one of the most beautiful John has heard in his life. “Every day was a chance,” he says. “From the beginning, really.”

Sherlock looks at him for a long moment, not putting into words whatever thoughts are going through his head. Then he is lifting off the bed, leaning into John with his hands and torso, pressing him into the bed, mouth finding John’s again. They are kissing again and Sherlock is aligning his body over John’s, hips coming together, hardness meeting hardness and John is gasping into Sherlock’s mouth, hands roaming over that lithely-muscled back, holding Sherlock to himself. Sherlock’s mouth is hungry, demanding, and John is all too willing to give him everything he wants. Anything. There is nothing off the table, off limits. He will give all of himself to this, to the man who just asked him to retire with him one day. Every pent-up feeling he has ever had for Sherlock is translating into the physical realm, at last – every motion he makes will be a physicalised utterance of love, of promise, of commitment. Sherlock’s tongue is pressing into his, lips pulling at John’s, body beginning to move against his and John never dared imagine how passionate he could be, after all. Who knew that behind those rapid-fire deductions and insistences on thinking lay a real human with real desire, real need for touch, for affection, even love? (Is this love? It feels like love, John thinks.) Sherlock moves his mouth to John’s throat and applies his tongue to John’s pulse point, and John moans. “Is this how it’s done?” Sherlock asks, half-whispering, breath hot against John’s wet skin. “Is this what people do?”

John is having difficulty speaking, hand wound into the mess of curls at the back of Sherlock’s neck. “I’m – sort of improvising myself, here,” he manages to get out. “This will – this will do the trick, I think…” The fact that he can feel Sherlock’s erection grinding against his through their pyjamas is proof, isn’t it, proof of Sherlock’s desire for him and simply knowing that gives John confirmation and confidence like he has never felt before. And Sherlock’s question, rasped through unmistakeable desire could almost be mistaken for scorn ( _Is this what people do?_ , as though slightly making mock of it), but John hears the real question beneath it. Sherlock is looking for confirmation, himself, even while pinning John to the sheets of his own bed as their cocks war through two layers of pyjamas. He moves his hands to Sherlock’s arse, which is every bit as firm and smooth as he has imagined it would be. It is rhythmically clenching and unclenching as Sherlock uses his knee for leverage to drive himself against John. “It – it feels really good,” John gasps out, which is not entirely what he planned on saying, but nonetheless entirely true. He can feel himself leaking a little, feels that his pants are damp. 

All of the lines in Sherlock’s forehead are creased, a low sound coming from his throat. John belatedly realises it was his name. Sherlock says it again, then again, then puts his mouth back on John’s, kissing without restraint. One long hand presses into John’s forehead, his cheek, fingers shoving into his hair. “John – ” Sherlock looks and sounds half-wild, desperate, absolutely ruined with lust, his voice so low it comes out in a growl. “Want to be in you, inside you.”

John has never done that before, but a pulse of desire shudders through him at the notion of Sherlock doing _that_ , wanting him _that_ much. “Okay,” he says, half-whispering, nodding. “Okay. We can do that.”

Sherlock’s expression goes fierce, almost angry-looking, his fingers gripping the side of John’s face. “I haven’t, before, I… I don’t know…”

“It’s okay,” John assures him, only just above a whisper now. “I haven’t either, but we’ll… it’ll be all right.”

Sherlock hesitates a moment, then seems to make some sort internal decision, nodding slightly to himself. “Okay,” he says. He pushes a hand under the pillow under John’s head and finds a tube. He doesn’t seem to quite know what to do with it next, so John spares him, though what he wants to ask is why Sherlock has it and what he does with it normally. 

“Give that here,” he says instead. Sherlock surrenders it without a fight. John takes off the lid and tosses it in the direction of the night table and misses, but he couldn’t possibly care less right now. “Give me your fingers.” Sherlock holds out his hand obediently and lets John squeeze lubricant onto his fingers. John puts some in his own hand. “This, er, might be a good time to take off our pants,” he says, trying to sound calm and reasonable but only succeeding in sounding a bit awkward. 

Sherlock just nods again, rolls off him and kicks off his pyjamas, strips off his t-shirt, and suddenly there is so much of him, of his pale skin and smoothly muscled body that John stops breathing for a second or two. Sherlock is kneeling on the bed, looking a touch uncertain, hair a chaos from sleep and John’s fingers, erection jutting out in front of him. John has a moment of disbelief that this is really happening. Sherlock is going to fuck him. He went to bed alone and thinking that he’d ruined their friendship forever and lost any chance at ever, eventually persuading Sherlock to let him touch back while they slept, to _this_. It was incredible. He is indubitably the luckiest person alive right now. Sherlock smiles a little, still not entirely sure of him. “You’re staring,” he says. 

John blinks. “Sorry,” he says. And then, straight from the gut, no filters, “You’re beautiful.”

In the streetlight, Sherlock suddenly smiles. His entire face is smiling, eyes crinkling up at the edges. He looks happier than John has ever seen him before, even happier than at announcements of serial killers and triple homicides. He doesn’t say anything, just kneels there smiling at John as though it is the best day of his life. His hands are suddenly on the legs of John’s pyjamas, yanking them off in one fluid motion. “T-shirt,” he says, eyes on John’s cock as though he has never seen one before and is completely fascinated by it. Perhaps that’s exactly the case. John wriggles out of his t-shirt obediently and chucks it on the floor. Sherlock laughs at this, just a low sound in his throat. “Tell me what I should do,” he says, and now he seems suddenly ten times more assured. (Has he been needing this, this confirmation all along, too?) 

The thought makes John warm from head to toe. “You’ll need to put your fingers in first,” he says, though what he’s thinking is _I love you_. Not quite time for that yet, keep it together, Watson. He’s surprised to hear his voice sounding so steady. “One at a time. Then two, probably, it depends. I’ve never, er, I’ve never, either, so…”

“I’ll be gentle,” Sherlock promises. He glances up at John’s face, reassuring, then immediately resumes his intensive study of John’s cock. John thinks that he should feel self-conscious, but it’s quite evident that Sherlock likes what he sees, if he finds it this inordinately interesting. Sherlock bends and – is he sniffing it? Yes, he is. John gives a breathy laugh, which Sherlock more or less ignores. He then runs his tongue along it, starting at the base and circling around the head. John groans. Those quicksilver eyes flick up to his. “You like that?” Sherlock asks. It’s a real question, as though he’s going to take notes afterward and analyse them for future observation. (He probably is, John thinks.) 

“Yeah. That’s a safe bet. And I – oh, _God_ – ” John’s words disappear altogether as Sherlock experimentally puts his mouth on it, lips wrapping firmly around the shaft, then, almost as an afterthought, tongue pressing in from below. It has been quite awhile since anyone has done this for him, and the fact that it is obviously brand new to Sherlock makes it strangely even more arousing. The little thoughtful noises he is making to himself now as his observations form are vibrating into John and he is trying very hard to keep his arse on the bed, keep from pumping upwards into that mouth (that _mouth_ , Christ), teeth gritting together, fingers destroying the sheets. Sherlock moves his face up and down, as though following instructions once memorised from a textbook on giving head, remembering to keep his teeth covered, his tongue in use, and John is going to come in record time if he keeps this up. 

He is about to give a warning when Sherlock pulls off without warning. “Tell me if it’s… uncomfortable,” he says, adjusting his position a bit. 

John pulls his knees up and apart, and now the self-consciousness kicks in a bit, but he’s mostly too turned on to worry much about anything at the moment. He feels Sherlock’s index finger at the edge of the hole, as though testing a little before pushing in. It’s tight and it feels invasive, but it’s Sherlock and he wants Sherlock in him, if that’s where Sherlock wants to be. After a moment, the spasming contractions relax and Sherlock slides the finger in further, waits again, then starts to move it a bit, just slipping it in and out. John is trying to relax, trying to imagine what it will feel like in a moment when something considerably thicker than a finger is pushing into him. The thought of it being Sherlock’s cock is luckily quite, quite arousing, though. He thinks it will be okay. “Do two fingers now,” he says, breathier than he thought it would come out. 

Sherlock is still watching his reactions as though this is the most interesting thing he has ever seen. He adds the second finger without question, turning them as they enter, index finger crooking slightly, and suddenly there is violet pleasure blooming behind John’s eyes. He gasps. Sherlock stops, concerned. “All right?”

“Very all right – do that again – ” John can hardly string words together. 

“Ah.” Sherlock sounds satisfied. “Like this?”

That sensation again, and John is instantly aware of why men do this, beyond out of love for their partners. “I think I’m ready for – yeah, I am. You can – ”

Sherlock exhales noisily and withdraws his fingers. “All right.”

“Come here,” John commands. Sherlock bends over him again willingly, and as they kiss, John reaches down to the cock pressing into his and gets his hand around it, slick with lubricant. Above him, Sherlock goes rigid, his cock jerking in John’s hand. His eyes close, mouth opens. He looks like he is trying to say something, possibly John’s name, he can see the _J_ trying to form, but nothing is coming out. John gets it: this might actually be the first time in Sherlock’s life that anyone has ever touched him like this. Emboldened and feeling fiercely affectionate (wrong word, but John can’t think of a better at the moment), and terribly, terribly privileged at being the one who gets to witness this, make that face happen. He was just intending to make sure that Sherlock was well-lubricated beforehand, but he decides to do a better job than that. He puts his free hand on Sherlock’s face, cupping his jaw line, fingers in the hair at the base of Sherlock’s neck, and begins to stroke him gently with the other. If it’s too intense, Sherlock will come before even entering him, and he doesn’t think that either of them wants that. This is extreme for their first time, but he understands why Sherlock wants to do it (rather like a child at a buffet, wanting to sample everything at once, he thinks). It’s also about confirmation, claiming, proving, and John wants that as much as Sherlock does. So he keeps it gentle, fist sliding slowly along Sherlock’s impossibly hard cock, firmly enough for it to be really pleasurable without being too much. Sherlock is trying not to actively buck into it, but his hips are fighting him. “You like that?” John murmurs, turning the question back on Sherlock. 

Sherlock can’t seem to organise his thoughts into speech. “John,” he says, but it’s mangled and he can’t get anything else out after that. “J – John – ” An edge of desperation rises in his voice and John understands and lets go. Sherlock’s eyes open and find his. “John, I…”

“Yes.” John’s entire body is trembling in aching desire pulsing through his veins. “I’m ready. You’re ready.” He pulls his knees up even further, spreading himself open for Sherlock, one hand on Sherlock’s hip, the other on his shoulder now. 

Sherlock’s face is a mixture of uncertainty and arousal. He looks down, manually lining himself up, then _pushes_ , perhaps a little too hard, but John fully understands that Sherlock isn’t one hundred percent in control of his body at the moment. And it’s fine. More than fine. They both look down between them to see Sherlock’s cock disappearing into John, John’s lying flat on his stomach in its own, unflagging arousal. “John,” Sherlock pants, voice ragged and gravelly with concentration and lust, “I’m _in_ you.”

The only answer he can make is a moan, which forces itself past his lips before he can stop it. “Sherlock,” he breathes weakly, as Sherlock’s cock drives deeper and deeper into him, the heavy swing of his balls resting against John’s arse. They are joined. They are one. He can feel his face creased in some combination of want and slight discomfort and emotion too profound to be able to trust himself to speak. 

Sherlock stops there, looking down at him. “Okay?” His breath is uneven, throat bobbing as he swallows. 

John opens his eyes (when had he closed them?). “I can feel your pulse,” he says. 

Sherlock smiles at him, long and slow and lovely. “I can feel yours, too. I like this way better.”

“I think I do, too. Though people might talk if I check your pulse like this in public.” 

“Let them talk. This is brilliant.” Sherlock gasps, and stops talking in favour of beginning to move, having evidently decided either that John is ready for it or that he can’t hold himself back any longer, or both. His hands are on the undersides of John’s thigh and on his hip, respectively, holding him in place as he begins to thrust rhythmically into him. 

John is waiting for that magical place to light up again, for Sherlock to find that particular angle again, but even without it being specifically stimulated, he can feel the echo of it and more than that, the intoxicating feeling of knowing that Sherlock is in him, fucking him, as he has never done with anyone else, ever in his life, is staggering. But even as he is thinking this, Sherlock abruptly changes his pace, speeding up and going for longer, harder thrusts. On the third one, he hits John’s prostate again and when John gasps, stars glittering behind his eyes, Sherlock makes a deep, guttural sound at his reaction, moving even faster now. John had been gripping Sherlock’s shoulders, but now reaches down to curl a palm around his cock, pulling hard. 

Sherlock can barely speak. “You should – I should do that – ” He shifts his weight to his left arm, gets his hand over John’s, squeezing it, and together, while Sherlock is fucking him with increased need, rhythm almost faltering, John fucks their joined hands. Sherlock is groaning repeatedly, his name and other vague sounds, body thrashing into John’s, and it feels so incredibly good, Sherlock’s balls slapping against his arse, cock pushing so deeply into him that surely John’s organs are going to be permanently rearranged, and he could almost wish it could last forever if he wasn’t so close to coming already and needing it to happen. Sherlock’s hips snap hard, he is losing control, but delivers three sharp jabs at John’s prostrate in a row and there it is, the telltale tingle in his balls and John’s body jerks hard, blinding orgasm barrelling through him, out of him and onto his chest. Sherlock wastes no time after that. If John had thought he hadn’t been fully in control before, he was wrong, because now Sherlock is wordless, all strained breath, his body thrusting wildly, forcefully, building speed until a prolonged, almost agonised sound guts itself from his throat and he comes _hard_ , as though it is thirty-eight years’ worth of unspent orgasm all rushing into John at once. After the one long, stilled thrust, there are three, maybe four others, and then he goes limp, collapsing onto John and panting into his shoulder, breath rasping and harsh in John’s ear. 

There is come all over both of their chests, and John couldn’t be bothered to care in the slightest. He lets his legs relax, wrapping them around Sherlock’s. His arms feel heavy and sluggish, but he gets them around Sherlock’s back and holds him like never before, too close, but Sherlock is too spent to protest. They lie together just breathing hard. John can feel the aftershocks still shuddering through Sherlock’s body, down his long back. After a bit, Sherlock raises his head and looks at John. And then kisses him again, kisses him with complete lack of reserve or uncertainty, and John returns it in kind, telling him silently all the same things he just tried to say with his body, reaching up to touch Sherlock’s face again. After several long, glorious minutes of this, Sherlock pulls away again. “I can’t believe this is what we’ve been missing on out all this time. That we could have been doing this.”

“That’s because you’re an idiot,” John says. “Married to your work, indeed.”

Sherlock smiles at this but doesn’t respond to it, at least not directly. “How do you feel about bees?” he asks instead. 

John opens his mouth, closes it again, thinking, piecing together the leap on his own. He gets there after a moment. “Sussex?” 

Sherlock kisses him on the throat again; he seems to like doing that. “Sussex,” he agrees, into John’s neck. 

John considers this for a minute. Frankly, he couldn’t really care one way or the other. The point is that he’ll be there, and Sherlock will be there, and that no matter what happens in the next thirty years or so, they will have Sussex waiting for them. He finds Sherlock’s right wrist and brings it to his lips, feeling the steady pulse on his lips and then on his tongue. “Sure. Why not?”

***

_fin_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Sussex](https://archiveofourown.org/works/977491) by [consulting_smartass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/consulting_smartass/pseuds/consulting_smartass)
  * [[Cover Art] for Sussex](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4293636) by [IamJohnLocked4art (IamJohnLocked4life)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IamJohnLocked4life/pseuds/IamJohnLocked4art)




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